I've long felt that Artificial Life or an approach rooted in that is the best way to get a novel and interesting machine intelligence. The breakthrough with more conventional methods was surprising, but it still seems like it might hit a ceiling (or may have already?).
The major thing that's always stumped me is how to design a universal fitness function that can take you from soup to a brain. IRL there is "the environment" which contains resources that need to be consumed to survive, and the majority of evolution (senses, bodyforms, metabolic pathways, etc) is based on navigating this environment and extracting energy. Can we say that life or intelligence is a meaningful concept without this universal background reference plane and survival game?
One of the things I think is limiting about conventional systems is what I call the "brain-in-a-vat" problem. They don't "exist" in any meaningful sense, they don't "experience" anything, they don't have any "reason" or "motivation" to do or develop anything.
I think of something more like a video game. The world of World of Warcraft or Call of Duty is a mathematical construct that doesn't truly reflect how our world works, but, through a window we can interpret it in a way that we understand and relate to. Some kind of video game environment with more relaxed and "open-ended" parameters and a simulated survival mechanism would be an interesting experiment.
The abstract mentions metabolic constraints. Can you share more of your thoughts or conceptual approach to this?
The major thing that's always stumped me is how to design a universal fitness function that can take you from soup to a brain. IRL there is "the environment" which contains resources that need to be consumed to survive, and the majority of evolution (senses, bodyforms, metabolic pathways, etc) is based on navigating this environment and extracting energy. Can we say that life or intelligence is a meaningful concept without this universal background reference plane and survival game?
One of the things I think is limiting about conventional systems is what I call the "brain-in-a-vat" problem. They don't "exist" in any meaningful sense, they don't "experience" anything, they don't have any "reason" or "motivation" to do or develop anything.
I think of something more like a video game. The world of World of Warcraft or Call of Duty is a mathematical construct that doesn't truly reflect how our world works, but, through a window we can interpret it in a way that we understand and relate to. Some kind of video game environment with more relaxed and "open-ended" parameters and a simulated survival mechanism would be an interesting experiment.
The abstract mentions metabolic constraints. Can you share more of your thoughts or conceptual approach to this?