The Allure of Machinic Life:Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI

477 Pages·2008·4.4 MB·English

by  John Johnston

computer science/artificial intelligence
John Johnston is Professor of English and Comparative Litera- “ John Johnston is to be applauded for his engaging and eminently readable assessment of the J The Allure of Machinic Life

ture at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of Carnival new, interdisciplinary sciences aimed at designing and building complex, lifelike, intelligent o
h
of Repetition and Information Multiplicity. machines. Cybernetics, information theory, chaos theory, artificial life, autopoiesis, connection- Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI
n
ism, embodied autonomous agents—it’s all here!” s
t John Johnston
—Mark Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Reed College, and Editor-in-Chief, o The Allure of Machinic Life
Artificial Life n

Cover image: Of related interest In The Allure of Machinic Life, John Johnston examines new
Joseph Nechvatal, ignudiO gustO majOr, computer-robotic-assisted acrylic on Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI
forms of nascent life that emerge through technical inter-
canvas, 66” x 120”. Photo courtesy Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard.

© 2003 Joseph Nechvatal. How the Body Shapes the Way We Think actions within human-constructed environments —“machinic

A New View of Intelligence life” —in the sciences of cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial

Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard intelligence. With the development of such research initiatives
T
How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the h as the evolution of digital organisms, computer immune sys-
body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demon- e tems, artificial protocells, evolutionary robotics, and swarm
strate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same A systems, Johnston argues, machinic life has achieved a com-
time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foun- l plexity and autonomy worthy of study in its own right.
l
dation in our embodiment—in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies. u Drawing on the publications of scientists as well as a
r range of work in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory,
e
What Is Thought? but always with the primary focus on the “objects at hand” —
o
Eric B. Baum f the machines, programs, and processes that constitute ma-
chinic life—Johnston shows how they come about, how they
In What Is Thought? Eric Baum proposes a computational explanation of thought. Just as M
operate, and how they are already changing. This under-
Erwin Schrödinger in his classic 1944 work What Is Life? argued ten years before the dis- a
c standing is a necessary first step, he further argues, that
covery of DNA that life must be explainable at a fundamental level by physics and chemistry,
h must precede speculation about the meaning and cultural
Baum contends that the present-day inability of computer science to explain thought and i
n implications of these new forms of life.
meaning is no reason to doubt that there can be such an explanation. Baum argues that the i
c Developing the concept of the “computational assem-
complexity of mind is the outcome of evolution, which has built thought processes that act
blage” (a machine and its associated discourse) as a frame-
unlike the standard algorithms of computer science, and that to understand the mind we L
i work to identify both resemblances and differences in form
need to understand these thought processes and the evolutionary process that produced f
e and function, Johnston offers a conceptual history of each of
them in computational terms.
the three sciences. He considers the new theory of machines

proposed by cybernetics from several perspectives, includ-

ing Lacanian psychoanalysis and “machinic philosophy.” He
A Bradford Book The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu examines the history of the new science of artificial life and
its relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex
adaptive systems (as illustrated by a series of experiments
carried out on various software platforms). He describes the
history of artificial intelligence as a series of unfolding con-
John Johnston ceptual conflicts—decodings and recodings—leading to a
“new AI” that is strongly influenced by artificial life. Finally, in
examining the role played by neuroscience in several con-
temporary research initiatives, he shows how further success
978-0-262-10126-4 in the building of intelligent machines will most likely result
from progress in our understanding of how the human brain
actually works.
The Allure of Machinic Life

THE ALLURE OF MACHINIC LIFE
Cybernetics,Artificial Life, and the New AI
John Johnston
ABradfordBook
TheMITPress
Cambridge,Massachusetts
London,England
62008MassachusettsInstituteofTechnology
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformbyanyelectronicor
mechanicalmeans(includingphotocopying,recording,orinformationstorageandretrieval)
withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher.
For information about special quantity discounts, please email [email protected]
.edu
This book was set in Times New Roman and Syntax on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong
Kong.
PrintedandboundintheUnitedStatesofAmerica.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Johnston,JohnHarvey,1947–
Theallureofmachiniclife:cybernetics,artificiallife,andthenewAI/JohnJohnston
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-262-10126-4(hardcover:alk.paper)
1.Cybernetics. 2.Artificiallife. 3.Artificialintelligence. I.Title.
Q310.J65 2008
0030.5—dc22 2008005358
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Heidi

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
I FROMCYBERNETICSTOMACHINICPHILOSOPHY 23
1 CyberneticsandtheNewComplexityofMachines 25
2 TheIn-MixingofMachines:CyberneticsandPsychoanalysis 65
3 MachinicPhilosophy:Assemblages,Information,ChaoticFlow 105
II MACHINICLIFE 163
4 VitalCells:CellularAutomata,ArtificialLife,Autopoiesis 165
5 DigitalEvolutionandtheEmergenceofComplexity 215
III MACHINICINTELLIGENCE 275
6 TheDecodedCouple:ArtificialIntelligenceandCognitiveScience 277
7 TheNewAI:Behavior-BasedRobotics,AutonomousAgents,and
ArtificialEvolution 337
8 LearningfromNeuroscience:NewProspectsforBuildingIntelligent
Machines 385
Notes 415
Index 453

Preface
Thisbookexploresasingletopic:thecreationofnewformsof‘‘machinic
life’’ in cybernetics, artificial life (ALife), and artificial intelligence (AI).
By machinic life I mean the forms of nascent life that have been made to
emerge in and through technical interactions in human-constructed envi-
ronments. Thus the webs of connection that sustain machinic life are
material (or virtual) but not directly of the natural world. Although au-
tomata such as the eighteenth-century clockwork dolls and other figures
can be seen as precursors, the first forms of machinic life appeared in the
‘‘lifelike’’ machines of the cyberneticists and in the early programs and
robotsofAI.Machiniclife,unlike earliermechanicalforms,hasacapac-
ity to alter itself and to respond dynamicallyto changing situations.
More sophisticated forms of machinic life appear in the late 1980s and
1990s, with computer simulations of evolving digital organisms and the
construction of mobile, autonomous robots. The emergence of ALife as
a scientific discipline—which o‰cially dates from the conference on ‘‘the
synthesisandsimulationoflivingsystems’’in1987organizedbyChristo-
pher Langton—and the growing body of theoretical writings and new
research initiatives devoted to autonomous agents, computer immune
systems, artificial protocells, evolutionary robotics, and swarm systems
have given the development of machinic life further momentum, solidity,
and variety. These developments make it increasingly clear that while
machinic life may have begun in the mimicking of the forms and pro-
cesses of natural organic life, it has achieved a complexity and autonomy
worthyof study inits own right. Indeed, this is mychief argument.
While excellent books and articles devoted to these topics abound,
there has been no attempt to consider them within a single, overarching
theoretical framework. The challenge is to do so while respecting the
very significant historical, conceptual, scientific, and technical di¤erences
inthismaterialandthediverseperspectivestheygiveriseto.Tomeetthis