bordarretazos

“In (very) broad outline, then, the situation looks like this: It took a few million years for biological evolution to result in Homo sapiens, the first species to engage extensively in abstract thought and symbolic reasoning. Humans are the cognitive species par excellence, and we have used these abilities to instantiate symbolic reasoning and logic in artificial media, which now have their own evolutionary dynamics. In suggesting a parallel between biological and artificial evolution, I do not intend to minimize the significant differences between them. These differences can be understood through what I call the two great inversions. The first inversion replaced the biological mandate “survive and reproduce,” the process through which biological evolution proceeds, with the computational mandate “design and purpose.” Computational systems, unlike biological organisms, are designed for specific purposes, so their evolution in this sense proceeds in top-down fashion.