While I appreciate the analogy between our real universe and simpler physics-like mathematical models like the game of life, assuming intelligence doesn't arise elsewhere in your configuration, this control problem does not seem substantially different or more AI-like from any other engineering problems. After all, there are plenty of other problems that involve leveraging a narrow form of control on a predicable physical system to achieve a more refined control, ex. building a rocket that hits a specific target. The structure that arises from a randomly i... (read more)
Thank you for this thoughtful comment itaibn0.
Matter and energy and also approximately homogeneously distributed in our own physical universe, yet building a small device that expands its influence over time and eventually rearranges the cosmos into a non-trivial pattern would seem to require something like an AI.
It might be that the same feat can be accomplished in Life using a pattern that is quite unintelligent. In that case I am very interested in what it is about our own physical universe that makes it different in this respect from Life.
Now it could actually be that in our own physical universe it is also possible to build not-very-intelligent machines that begin small but eventually rearrange the cosmos. In this case I am personally more interested in the nature of these machines than in "intelligent machines", because the reason I am interested in intelligence in the first place is due to its capacity to influence the future in a directed way, and if there are simpler avenues to influence in the future in a directed way then I'd rather spend my energy investigating those avenues than investigating AI. But I don't think it's possible to influence the future in a directed way in our own physical universe without being intelligent.
What do you mean by this?
But if one entity reliably outcompetes another entity, then on what basis do you say that this other entity is the more intelligent one?
While I appreciate the analogy between our real universe and simpler physics-like mathematical models like the game of life, assuming intelligence doesn't arise elsewhere in your configuration, this control problem does not seem substantially different or more AI-like from any other engineering problems. After all, there are plenty of other problems that involve leveraging a narrow form of control on a predicable physical system to achieve a more refined control, ex. building a rocket that hits a specific target. The structure that arises from a randomly i... (read more)