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Article 1818 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: john@publications.ccc.monash.edu.au (John Wilkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: There are no "steps" in evolution
Message-ID: <1991Dec3.022827.6644@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 3 Dec 91 02:28:27 GMT
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The question of whether AIs will supplant humans in evolution overlooks
(as is commonly done) the true nature of evolution from Darwin to this
day: there are no inevitable stages or progressions in the evolutionary
process. Progress in evolution is only ever local - adaptation to the
local environment.

So will AIs compete against humans for specific ecological niches? [This
is a better way of asking it.] Perhaps they will. Will they succeed?
That is essentially unanswerable. Neo-Darwinism cannot make predictions in
specific cases. All species seem to go extinct eventually, probably we will
too. Note, however, that the most long-lived species appear to be the
least specialised in terms of environmental exploitation (eg, cockroaches).
Humans are successful, I think, BECAUSE we are unspecialised. AIs that are
"better" at specific tasks than humans are less likely to be successful in
the longer term, even if they were able to (1) interact with the world,
and (2) reproduce with variation, which are the minimal requirements for
evolution to occur. If you treat them as artefacts, then they evolve as do
all our artefacts, within social evolutionary processes. But since these
supervene on our biological evolution, I doubt that, as artefacts, they'll
eventually overtake us. As phenotypic effects of humanity, they may, 
however, eventually be the proximate cause of our extinction, or they may
be the cause of an increase in our overall adaptive fitness as a species.
The point is: only time will tell.

Receipt: $0.02. John Wilkins


