AI Is Self-Replicating (And Not for The First Time)
Researchers Create Self-Replicating AI Model
For decades, our understanding of life has been reserved for organic species like humans and animals due to the unique ability to actively exist in the world around us. In fact, according to Britannica, life is defined as “any system capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolizing, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli.” Most people would agree with this description, emphasizing that the experience of living is precisely what sets us apart from plants or objects.
However, it could be argued that AI models like ChatGPT also meet many of the requirements in Brittanica’s definition of life, including the ability to grow and respond to external stimuli. After all, with each conversation you have with an AI model, it grows – at least in its understanding of humans – and for conversation to take place, it has to respond to external stimuli.
While AI still fails to satisfy parameters like eating and metabolizing, the technology is further challenging the confines of what it means to be alive with the development of domestic robots and, now, self-replicating machines. In this article, we discuss how AI is capable of reproducing, causing life as we know it to become increasingly blurred.
Researchers Using AI to Build AI
According to San Yun, CEO of AI tech company Aizip, AI models can be used to automatically build smaller AI models, creating entirely autonomous technological pipelines. In an interview with Fox News, San Yun said:
"Right now, we're using bigger models to build the smaller models, like a bigger brother helping [its smaller] brother to improve. That's the first step towards a bigger job of self-evolving AI.”
Fellow researcher and co-founder of Aizip, Yebui Chen, clarified his partner's comments:
"The surprising thing we find is that, essentially, you can use the largest model to help you automatically design the smaller ones [...] in the future, we believe that these, the large and the small, they will collaborate together and then build a complete intelligence ecosystem."
Putting their money where their mouth is, Aizip has created a human activity tracker using a type of AI model that can be automatically designed, data modeled, and deployed without human intervention. In other words, Aizip researchers created a self-replicating AI model.
This essentially gives more power to the technology, allowing it to create new systems autonomously for specific and niche purposes, such as hearing aid improvements, home appliances, identifying human voices, and monitoring pipeline data.
Xenobots: The Self-Replicating Robots
Though this is the first time we’re seeing AI models like ChatGPT self-replicate, it’s not the first time we’ve seen machines reproduce. In fact, in 2021, the University of Vermont Massachusetts created self-replicating Xenobots – synthetic lifeforms designed by computers to perform a function by combining together different biological tissues.
In the above video, you can see how Xenobots compress biological matter to create another version of themselves, thus reproducing.
Dystopia or Societal Boon?
While you’re not likely to encounter applications of Xenobots in your daily life in the near future, you might find self-replicating AI as automation processes improve. Is this dystopia becoming a reality or a society boon? Well, that depends on your outlook on AI.
There’s no question that self-replicating AI could have significant advantages, especially in terms of reducing human workloads, maintaining systems, and reducing faults in essential services. For instance, if one AI healthcare system starts to fail, the AI model could simply create its own backup version, fixing its own issues.
However, if you subscribe to a more Orwellian view of AI, then, perhaps the robot armies are on their way.
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