Computing vs. Genetics - Advancing Artificial Intelligence Through Biological Process Applications - page 168

Self-Reproduction

similar new organism from simple components
existing in its surroundings.
Scientists have been dreaming about creat-
ing machines programmed to produce replicas
of themselves since 1948. These replicas would
produce other replicas and so on, without any
limit whatsoever. The theory that established the
principles of how such a feat could be achieved
was first formulated in 1948. This theory has
two aspects, which could be termed logical and
mechanical. The mechanical question was ad-
dressed, among others by Lionel S. and Roger
Penrose (1974) and will not be considered here.
The logical part, which is our concern here, was
first researched by von Neumann at the Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton. It was there
that von Neumann suggested the possibility of
building a device that had the property of self-
reproduction. The method involved building
another describable machine from which it fol-
lowed logically that this machine would carry a
sort of tail that would include the code describing
how to reproduce the body of the machine and
how to reproduce the actual code. According to
Kemeny (1955), a colleague of von Neumann, the
basic body of the machine would be composed of
a box containing the constituent parts, to which
a tail would be added that stored the units of
information. From the mechanical viewpoint, it
was considered that the elementary parts from
which the machine would have to be built would
be rolls of tape, pencils, rubbers, empty tubes,
quadrants, photoelectric cells, motors, batteries
and other similar devices. The machine would
assemble these parts from the surrounding raw
material, which it would organise and transform
into a reproduction of itself. As von Neumann's
aim was to solve the logical conditions of the
problem, the incredible material complications of
the problem were left aside for the time being.
Von Neumann's proposal for building ma-
chines that have the reproductive capability of
the living organisms was originally considered
as an interesting mathematical speculation more

In his utopian novel “Erewhon”, which is the mirror
image of “nowhere”, Samuel Butler (1982) explores
the possibility of machines using men as inter-
mediaries for building new machines. There have
been many examples of machines built by other
machines in the last century. Steam engines were
used to build other steam engines, and machine
tools made all sorts of devices. Long before the
computer era, there were mechanical and electrical
machines that formed metal to build engines. The
Industrial Revolution was largely possible thanks
to machine tools: machines that were conceived
exclusively to build other machines. However,
devices that can be used to make other devices
were not exactly the type of machine tools that the
English Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, had
in mind when he said, “The mystery of myster-
ies is to view machines making machines”, i.e.
machines building other machines without human
involvement. In other words, machines that self-
reproduce or, if you prefer a less controversial
term, are self-replicate.
What is the meaning of the word reproduc-
tion? As John G. Kemeny (1955) pointed out, if
reproduction is understood as the creation of an
object that is identical to the original one from
nothing, it is evident that a machine cannot self-
reproduce, but neither could a human being. For
reproduction not to violate the principle of energy
conservation, some raw material is required. What
characterises the reproduction of life is that the
living organism is capable of creating new, similar
organisms from the inert matter in its surround-
ings. If we accept that machines are not alive
and we insist on the fact that the creation of life
is a fundamental characteristic of reproduction,
the problem is settled: a machine is incapable
of self-reproduction. The problem is therefore
reformulated so as not to logically rule out the
reproduction of machines. To do this, we need
to omit the word “living”. So, we will stipulate
that the machine should be capable of creating a