Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Watson and Crick uncovered the working mechanism of DNA, which was
regarded as the organism heredity.
Von Neumann provided the constructive proof of the possibility of machine
self-replication, which requires that the self-replicating machine should have
computation and construction universality. Smith also provided the proof of
replication universality. His proof gracefully uses the recursive theorem in
recursive function theory.
Another life form in computer is the computer virus, which has existed for 10
years. More and more computer viruses are developed rapidly, which will
become infective in near future. The biologists are arguing about whether
biological virus has life. Though they can reproduce themselves, they do not have
their own metabolism to replicate the part needed, and must take over the
metabolism of the parents to reproduce the offspring. Because the media are
different, computer viruses seem a bit more active than biological viruses.
The goal of studying artificial life is to attempt to pursue the goals of supreme
science and intelligence, but if keep carelessly and let them creep into the
computer network or the biosphere, it will cause the crushing consequence to the
real world. At present, it is known that artificial life can bring a small amount of
dangers. As we have more and more knowledge of biosynthesis phenomenon,
this kind of danger will increase. When the robots can reproduce themselves, just
as easy as the computers do, we do not know what the world will be like.
Artificial life has offered a new forum for discussing many philosophy
problems, which are the classical and modern problems about essence,
intelligence and existence of life. There are many arguments about the possibility
of artificial intelligence, in which it seems to fall into the hopeless mire as to the
concepts such as “thinking” and “consciousness”.
The arguments about artificial life are more or less similar to that about
machine intelligence. Both of artificial intelligence and artificial life attempt to
realize in the computer. When the scientists are thinking what “intelligence” is,
artificial intelligence has totally changed its direction. Though artificial
intelligence has not reached its total goal, it has already made many contributions
to scientific field.
Similar to artificial intelligence, artificial life can also impel us to think what
“living” means. In fact, there is no generally acknowledged definition of the “life
state”. When being asked about what life is, biologists will often enumerate the
main behavior and characteristics of most life systems, such as self-reproduction,
metabolism, death, complex organization and behavior, etc. It is true that the
