Silicon humans

• Main Author: Samaniego, Chester Ace R.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1997
• Subjects: Human genetics > Moral and ethical aspects; Artificial intelligence; Silicon in the body; Neurology; Mind and body; Philosophy; Comparative
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/1618
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study entitled Silicon Humans aims to present the feasibility of the goal of sciences of the artificial, being Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. The author wished to determine the potentialities of current approaches to these fields of study. He sought to determine how far they could go. Could it achieve what science fiction writers only dream of? Could they achieve a merger of humans and machine? In the context of this thesis, intelligence and consciousness, or the mind, in a materialistic manner and are the distinguishing factor of humans. The mind is a manifestation of the Darwinian workings of the brain and can be replicated by humans with their artifacts. Early research in Artificial Intelligence was found to be a failure by many due to the rather complex nature of the human mind. Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence was founded on wrong premises and ideals concerning the human mind. Recently, two new schools of thought have taken the limelight. The first of which was the Nature-Based Artificial Intelligence researchers. They were composed of the connectionists and the darwinists. Their approach was to emulate the mechanisms of Nature. The connectionists, in particular, posit that the brain was a computational engine built on the operation of its neurons rather than a symbol manipulating engine as GOFAI had assumed. They took inspiration on the findings of neuroscience and related fields of study. Neuroscience have shown that mental states are translated into the circuitry of the brain. Connectionists hope to emulate that mechanism unfortunately this was not an easy task. The need to understand the organizing mechanisms of the brain was necessary. This is where the darwinists come in. The darwinists, on the other hand, sought to emulate and replicate the mechanisms of nature--natural selection and self-organization. They hoped they could utilize these mechanisms to evolve an intelligent machine. The darwinists got their inspiration from the works of molecular biologists. AL researchers are also using a similar approach as the darwinists which made the line between the two fields blurred. This consequence comes to no surprise because evolutionists believes that life and mind are products of evolutionary mechanisms. The third school of thought sought to develop a machine from experience. They believed that for a machine to have human intelligence it would have to interact with the environment it is in. Cog is their platform of study at the moment. Cog emulates nature in only in a design sense, that is by functionality or purpose. They hope Cog would learn to use its faculties and learn from its own experience of the surrounding world. The writer believes that the two researchers have very good potential and are more faithful to what the mind and life are. They could in effect achieve what the GOFAI researchers couldn't and probably more. NBAI, in particular, could succeed in emulating humans in form and structure given the development and perfection of the field of nanotechnology. This develop would implicate the potential merger of man and machine. Their research also brings a promise of a better life for human beings. Their accomplishments could serve as a means to enhance ourselves and change the world as we know it. There could be complications but complications carry less weight as compared to the prospective benefits that may be gained fro AL research.