Thinking about artificial intelligence has led me to ask whether it is possible for computers to evolve. I don't think they can. The implications for artificial intelligence will be that the route by which humanity arrived at self-awareness is closed to computers.
It is possible to envisage programs (maybe some have already been written) which design computer hardware or write software. These designs and programs could be tested within computer generated models. In time it is possible to imagine computers dedicated to the design, testing and manufacture of new computers and software. Is it possible that over time, as the computers design increasingly complex hardware and software that self-awareness might emerge?
I think not and the reason is very interesting. It is that such a system is designed, it is not subject to natural selection. Somewhere, invisible in the system I have described there is a human element, identifying what is significant.
The attributes we assign to living things, eg nutrition, movement, reproduction, etc, and including self-awareness, unfold over time. They unfold as the organism responds to its environment. This response, this conversation between the organism and its environment is intrinsic to the organism. Any form of computer evolution will be designed extrinsically. The design is external to the designed.
There is no computer equivalent of the gene. The code for the design of new computers is external to the computer. Granted, it can be coded as data and manipulated but it remains manipulation of bits of data.
If I am right, this calls into question both ultra-Darwinism and Intelligent Design. If computers cannot be self-aware and do not evolve, it calls into question the reductionist view of the gene. The gene is necessary for evolution but not sufficient. It needs the other paraphernalia in the cell and the wider environment. This is not a digital process but multi-factorial, perhaps impossible to follow in detail.
But it is very definitely a blow to the intelligent designers. Evolution is intrinsic to the living organism. There cannot be a design from outside. Self-awareness cannot be designed into something, neither can life.
Living organisms need neither a designer nor natural selection alone to evolve. Life is itself capable of evolution, unfolding in its own way. The lack of design does not mean there is no purpose involved.
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