Evolution and Machine Minds

There are numerous science fiction stories involving computers and robots (mobile computers) developing intelligence and apparently coming to life. Someone may feel creepy because they feel watched by the android standing in the corner, thinking it is plotting. (In a movie, that may be so.) The comedy Short Circuit had Number Five come to life after being struck by lightning.

While great strides have been made in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), but the Terminator and other movies about machine rebellions will always remain in the realm of science fiction. It all comes down to software and programming.

Pixabay / Lukas

Can computers actually learn? To some extent, yes. Antivirus software uses heuristic analysis in addition to other malware detection methods, but these occasionally yield what are called false positives; something was flagged as a virus because it had similar traits, but it was completely valid. Whatever capability for learning a computer may have, that was also programmed.

It is interesting that people who use biomimetics and copy what is observed in nature and applying for our use (such as a whale fin inspiring a bicycle wheel) deny credit to the Creator, instead praising Evolution as an entity. There is an evolutionary mindset involved in developing AI, but as with biomimetics, a superior mind must be involved. God the Creator provided things in nature for biomimetics, and humans are using their God-given minds to design machines that can have rudimentary thinking abilities. Evolution in the particles-to-programmer sense cannot occur with AI.

Computers—and robots—are composed of physical components called the hardware. However, this is not enough. Without something to give instructions— the software (also called a ‘program’) computers won’t operate and robots won’t move.

. . .

Software does what it is made for—what it is instructed to do—and only that. Even where it is able to ‘learn’, that is only because it has had that capacity programmed into it. The software will blindly follow the algorithm (a sequence of instructions for carrying out a task) given to it. This defines how the program would (in our example) calculate the identifying information and how to compare it with your stored profile. Note that software and algorithms are human intelligence conveyed to a computer.

You can read the full article at "Artificial intelligence and evolution." You may also be interested in "Artificial Psychotic Intelligence." By the way, I don't think it was intended as a nod to evolution, but the lightning bringing Number Five to life in Short Circuit is reminiscent of the failed Miller-Urey experiment on the origin of life.