Computers coming alive?

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 18

Computers coming alive?

Are Computers Alive? Evolution and New Life Forms. By Geoff Simons. The Harvester Press, 1983. 212 pp. $32.50. (Reviewed by Neill Birss) Geoff Simons gives four groups of criteria that are necessary to decide if something is alive: structural, energy processing, information-processing, and reproductive. He then argues that computers and robots, suitably configured, can be seen to satisfy the life criteria under these headings. Computers might fit the first of these three conditions, but it stretches the point to suggest that because some super-automated factory in the near future may allow robots to make other robots they will be reproducing themselves in a way that can be equated with biological reproduction. This is a tough problem for Simon. And even if computers and robots were able to do everything in a way parallel to biological systems, does that mean they are alive? The word, “alive”, to us laymen seems to have as part of the rules for its correct use that it applies to a biological system. When applied to other objects, such as matches, or cartridges, or electric wires, its use is surely metaphoric. But this is a point that a university philosopher could probably resolve in half a minute. Computer science is making Man take a new look at how the brain works, what consciousness is — new raw material for those who would ponder what the mind is and how the

soul, if there is any, interacts with the brain. The Japanese and Americans are working on what is known as the fifthgeneration of computers, and these will work more closely to the way that a human brain functions. Some of the new supercomputers will far outreach the intellectual competence of human beings, Simon as an example of how they will work more like brains, he cites certain types of logic arrays that could form the basis of sophisticated robot brains. As with biological brains, they can reorganise themselves automatically when limited damage occurs to subcomponents. This is “clearly strictly analogous to the zoological brain s facility of switching functions to other neural circuits when there is cellular damage,” Simon writes. Despite its title, this is not a “geewhiz” book. It does have an interesting rundown on what is happening in computer and robot technology. But such introductions abound. The book’s value is in its stimulating application of concepts from the new technology to the human brain. From the pace of computer research it is clear that even if computers are never regarded as alive, parallels between them and our brains will chip Man’s ego: perhaps as much as when it was learned the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.