[Peter Cariani, 960213, 1300]
Bill Powers wrote: [Bill Powers (960213.0300 MST)]
Do you think that any computer program (as we now conceive programming)
could "go up a level?" That is, could the machine make any comments
about why it is doing what it is doing? Could it derive a general
principle from the interaction? A system concept like "computer" or
"machine"?
I think devices are possible that could do such things, but the
kinds of devices would be different from the kinds of
digital computers we now have. In order for anything qualitative
new to evolve in an artificial device, (I think)
the device must have some degree of autonomy of
structure/function relative to its designer.
I think that such a device would
need to be able to evolve its own hardware
(or at least to appropriate more/new hardware from somewhere else)
and to augment its own sensors, effectors, and computational parts
to do these kinds of things, which require that the "state space"
of the device be (autonomously) expanded in its dimensionality.
I don't think it can be <realized> in a computer simulation,
unless such concepts are somehow allowed for by the designer
of the simulation beforehand (in other words they
would not be created entirely de novo). One can make programs that
analyze their own structure, but I don't think they really get at
what I would want (new "systems concepts"). One can also <represent>
the process in a limited way in a simulation, but this will not
in and of itself, realize new concepts in the machine
in an open-ended way.
I'm sure you've thought long and hard about various
analog devices that would evolve new (higher-level) control loops,
and (as you probably have also thought)
it might actually be easier to build an analog one than
a mixed-digital-analog one.
Peter Cariani
peter@epl.meei.harvard.edu
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