[ivanv]

a while ago some crazy thought about use of ai crossed my mind.

we all know what Universe looks like. we live in it. but how we got here (hehe, i mean from philosophic aspect)? where we was before? let's take a look at evolution. there is a whole range of beings from single cell organisms to complex evolutionary advanced organisms. and they are constantly evolving, as biology says. but to hold that theory, something else has to be true.

right now, somewhere - maybe in volcanos, or in the sea or who knows where - a process is going on: simple living beings are constantly being brought to this Universe. if this isn't true, evolution vould through past milleniums make single celled organisms evolute to complex ones, so right now there would not be any single cell organisms. but that's false. there exist single celled organisms. and it leads to conclusion that mentioned process is constantly happening (bringing beings alive from who knows where to our Universe). or maybe evolution avoids some single cell organisms. but it had to be done in the past, on forming very first organism. i'd like to call it a life phenomena.

and if mother nature can do it, can we do it also? all we have to do is to examine "life phenomena" and apply it to some use of it. well, something big comes to my mind. deranged as i am, i'm thinking of some sort of "big bang" - to bring alive every single creature that can live in our Universe. what about dead ones? could we bring them back to life? all of that, i think, could apply after we solve the question of mortality.

what else the life phenomena explanation could give to us? some of us would maybe like to live as a form of energy, without this body, shaping holographic picture of us in any shape we want. 

so, how to explore it? one way could be through artificial intelligence. but let's say one more thing. if there can exist a machine that can bring every creature of the Universe alive, what could misuse of that machine do? 

oh, leave me, i'm just a crazy man who will try to do it all.

[DaveMorton]

And what's wrong with being crazy? Or old?

One need only look at past fictional literature to see at least some of the ramifications of "creation run amok", from Mary Shelly, to Arthur C. Clarke, to countless others. But bear in mind that looking at "past failures" is often self defeating. Use these "failures" as a guide, not as "what NOT to do", but more for "what techniques to avoid". Who knows? Perhaps our own "creation" may have come about as a direct result of this very discussion (if you accept that time travel is, indeed, possible, and that some future advancement in a "God AI" came about as a result of the musings here). Granted, the possibility is infinitesimally small, but...

[Art]

Interesting discussion.

For some similar thoughts as well as thoughtful new ones read:

The Alpha Centauri Project
  (Thinking Worlds)
by Marco Santini

available in ebook format - Free!

[ivanv]

Tree of Porphyry, as drawn by Peter of Spain (1329)

[Art]

Quite on the mark for his time....