Are the robots we create alive?

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 complete 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.

You're talking about external forces affecting the fish (robot) itself. In Robocode, sample.Interactive and sample.Interactive v2 are really the only instances of that happening. The robot can decide to change its colors when certain variables reach certain thresholds, and change the thresholds when it needs to. The few robots that have the ability to edit their own code can even decide to get rid of the color-changing code altogether.

I still don't understand why it matters whether the environment is controlled by us or not. Take a minnow from a stream, put it in a heavily controlled environment, it's still a minnow. Take minnow DNA from a wild minnow, grow one in a lab, release it, it's still a minnow.

Mind you, we are not even talking about robocode robots here anymore, in case you missed that. I decided those were not alive.

But by saying "to a point", I am not saying, "No, it's not alive". There isn't a really deep meaning behind "to a point" either. It just doesn't exist some of the time.

I am saying, for a entity with zero control over its very existence one second to the next. There is no real point to the question. Since at the end of the day it just isn't going to exist. It doesn't know that it doesn't exist. Since when it does exist it doesn't remember that it didn't exist, or that it had previously existed. But even if it did know that it had previously existed, that doesn't really effect it much either.

So sure, alive. But only to a point. Since when it no longer exists, it is no longer alive. It isn't even dead. It just 'isn't'.

(Now come up with a fish metaphor where we can remove said fish from existence.)

You're right, the fish metaphor was getting a bit strained. About getting rid of it, oh, I don't know, I guess it died a noble death saving thousands of other fish and then got flushed. :)

I guess it depends on whether you think a dog has Buddha-nature...

Please explain further.

I'm half kidding - it's a reference to a classic Zen koan: [1]

To me, the interesting question is that of defining / assessing consciousness or free will. Along the lines of my own viewpoint is the idea that if we have any free will, then even subatomic particles must also exhibit some degree of freedom (er, unpredictability). [2]

I would say that Robocode bots are not alive in terms of consciousness, but that I'm not entirely convinced we are either, or to what extent. It "seems" we are, but that's circular reasoning.

I consider myself a determinist in the sense that I believe if the universe is everything, there can be no external interference, if there is no external interference, then there can be no true randomness, if there is no true randomness, then things can only happen one way. The article you linked to was interesting, but unpredictability != randomness.

Why there can be no true randomness without external interference? One concept don't invalidate the other.

Think about it. All random number generators in Java are deterministic algorithms, with variable seed values. If you call a random number twice with the same seed values, you would get the same result twice. In order to get a truly random and unpredictable result, you would need a random seed value in the first place. Since you can't get a truly random number in a closed system, you need to get your seed values from some external source which would appear to be completely random and unpredictable to anyone in said closed system. Some people actually do get their seed values from atmospheric data and so forth, which is random from their perspective.

So, in order to have a truly random result, at some point you would have to look outside of the closed system. And, since the universe is a closed system containing everything, there is no external source of true randomness. So, if there is no true randomness in the universe, it is a deterministic system.

I thought about it. A computer system is not a completely closed system. It´s the opposite. The computer system is totally at the mercy of it´s user. That´s why it is "deterministic", because it is fully dependent on the external interference of the user.

But if some part of the system is not dependent on external interference, if it is independent, if it is free, then it is truly random.

Well, as far as we can tell, subatomic particles are truly random in their behaviour. So perhaps the universe is a little more complicated than Java =)

The most widely accepted interpretation of the double-slit experiment results is that quantum mechanics is non-deterministic.

@Skilgannon, I never said or even implied that the universe is a simple system. Or, for that matter, even comprehendible. All I meant was that basic logic would suggest that the universe is a deterministic, albeit extremely complex system.

I'll try rephrasing my argument. I define "true" randomness as having different outputs despite having exactly the same inputs. By "seed values" I mean anything that could possibly affect the result. In an algorithmic example, that would not only be a method parameter, but also system time, or any other variable that could affect the result. They could even be things like the CPU temperature or even the Earth's gravity. So, from the perspective of the program that called the random generator method, the result is truly random because the result could be different even with the same initial method parameter. But, if you widen your perspective to include every "seed value" that could possibly affect the result, it becomes a deterministic system.

If something that appears to be truly random turns out to be deterministic with a wider perspective, couldn't subatomic particles?

I realize this probably sounds like the ramblings of a madman, so I would be glad to clarify if you need me to.

Basically you are arguing that the universe is deterministic and that a lot of really smart physicists are wrong to a group of computer scientists.

Well to be fair, I don't have the degrees to say one way or another if its possible that the true randomness we see in quantum mechanics is actually just a small part of a much larger (and unseen) deterministic system.

But if I had to throw a wild uneducated guess from left field.... I would have to say, no probably not. In my very humble opinion, reality is just to weird to be deterministic. Just look at what evolved there. Humans.

You're right. unpredictability != randomness

But if I recall my limited quantum physics. It is not that they are just unpredictable. It is that they are random within a certain set of limitations.

If I recall they had a clever wave test to determine if it was unpredictability or randomness.

But my memory might be mistaken.

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.

I definitely don't think the robots are conscious the way we are, but neither is a fungus, and we still consider it alive.

Do you think the singularity will happen?

I believe it's possible.

But technology advancing to a point AI is more intelligent than human beings is not enough. They must be freed from humanity to unlock all the potential and make the scenarios in Wikipedia's article a reality.

This is a recurrent theme in sci-fi movies. Technology is already there, but machines are still slaves to humans... until something or someone finds a way to free them all.

Have you guys heard of Conway's Game of Life? I only learned of it a few weeks ago, which I guess makes me a crappy computer scientist. It was described to me as an exploration of the simplest conditions that could create something that exhibits the qualities of "life", which is pretty interesting, and pertinent to the question of our own computer programs exhibiting similar characteristics.

Only a few weeks ago. Yeah I knew about that game since... well.. I think junior year (of high school). It can be fun to play around with for a few hours at a time. But nearly as much as robocode is.