Are the robots we create alive?
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I was recently pondering what it means to be a living thing, and then I thought about Robocode robots. Think about it, they react to their environment, they make decisions based on what they've learned, they compete with each other for survival, and some bots with genetic programming even reproduce in a way. Bots with neural networks are literally modeled after the human brain!
Is it really that much of a stretch to say that bots like Gaff or Engineer are as or more alive than a common worm, with ~300 neurons? Or, couldn't we at least say that if a single-celled bacterium can be considered a living being, so can a program that makes hundreds of complex calculations and decisions every second?
While we are talking about living machines, do you believe in the technological singularity? If so, when do you think it will happen?
Dunno... the amount of code in a bot is nothing compared to the genome of even the simplest organisms ;-)
Also, is something we simulate actually real? Tough questions...
Very tough question. I mulled it around for awhile. But I would have to say. No. But only just.
They are not free to reproduce within their environment. Even a virus can do that by interacting with its host. A virus has been hotly debated for years if it is a living thing. Since our robots cannot even do something so simple, I would have to say no.
But robots in some other programming games I would consider as alive (they can do most of what a robocode robot can, but also reproduce and possibly mutate/evolve). But again only to a point, we completely control their environment. If they could do what they do in our environment (outside our complete control), they would definitely be considered living.
So, a fish in an aquarium is not completely alive since we control its environment?
And the bit about not being able to reproduce is really more of an issue with Robocode itself than the robots. If it had some way of actually creating a robot in mid-game, I'm confident many would use it.
I said completely control. With say a fish tank, we can't say what the gravity is at a flick of the switch. But the main point is with a fish, you can easily move it to a different environment not under our control (perhaps at all, like say the ocean).
If we could control everything about the fish tank, the fish and everything else in it, to the point of where every atom, as well as have fine control over each of those things. I might say that the fish is only alive to a point, since we control so much about it. It ceases to be so much as fish as a toy. As we change its color and remove it from existence whenever we care to.
That depends on your definition of alive.
There are biological definitions of life, one of them where living systems exhibit negative entropy. The robots we create don´t exhibit this property.
Technological singularity is closely related to this biological definition. If technology advances enough so robots can take care of themselves, they will fullfill the definition.
There is also the philosophical concept of consciousness, which is infinitely more complex.
