Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines

Publication details

Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines

Tim Taylor, Alan Dorin

2018

Abstract

The influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Life (ALife) technologies upon society, and their potential to fundamentally shape the future evolution of humankind, are topics very much at the forefront of current scientific, governmental and public debate. While these might seem like very modern concerns, they have a long history that is often disregarded in contemporary discourse. Insofar as current debates do acknowledge the history of these ideas, they rarely look back further than the origin of the modern digital computer age in the 1940s–50s. In this paper we explore the earlier history of these concepts. We focus in particular on the idea of self-reproducing and evolving machines, and potential implications for our own species. We show that discussion of these topics arose in the 1860s, within a decade of the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and attracted increasing interest from scientists, novelists and the general public in the early 1900s. After introducing the relevant work from this period, we categorise the various visions presented by these authors of the future implications of evolving machines for humanity. We suggest that current debates on the co-evolution of society and technology can be enriched by a proper appreciation of the long history of the ideas involved.

Full text

Author preprint: pdf
On publisher's website: via DOI

Reference

Taylor, T., & Dorin, A. (2018). Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines. In T. Ikegami, N. Virgo, O. Witkowski, M. Oka, R. Suzuki, & H. Iizuka (Eds.), ALIFE 2018: Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018 (pp. 91–98). https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00022

BibTeX

@inproceedings{taylor2018past,
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Dorin, Alan},
  title = {Past Visions of Artificial Futures: One Hundred and Fifty Years under the Spectre of Evolving Machines},
  booktitle = {ALIFE 2018: Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2018},
  editor = {Ikegami, Takashi and Virgo, Nathaniel and Witkowski, Olaf and Oka, Mizuki and Suzuki, Reiji and Iizuka, Hiroyuki},
  year = {2018},
  publisher = {{MIT} Press},
  pages = {91--98},
  doi = {10.1162/isal_a_00022},
  category = {conference},
  keywords = {history, selfrep}
}

Note

Preprint on arXiv: arXiv:1806.01322

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PDF Full details
```
@article{taylor2024afterword,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {An Afterword to "Rise of the Self-Replicators": Placing John A. Etzler, Frigyes Karinthy, Fred Stahl, and Others in the Early History of Thought About Self-Reproducing Machines},
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Taylor, T. (2020). What Am I For? Self-Purpose and Self-Reproduction in Rossum’s Universal Robots (Samoúčelnost a samoreprodukce u Rossumových univerzálních robotů). In J. Čejková (Ed.), ROBOT 100: Sto rozumů (pp. 178–180). Prague: Kosmas.

PDF Full details

@incollection{taylor2020what,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {What Am I For? Self-Purpose and Self-Reproduction in Rossum's Universal Robots (Samoúčelnost a samoreprodukce u Rossumových univerzálních robotů)},
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Full details
```
@book{taylor2020rise,
  title = {Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve},
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Dorin, Alan},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2020},
  isbn = {978-3-030-48233-6},
  address = {Cham},
  category = {book},
  keywords = {history, selfrep}
}
```
Taylor, T., Dorin, A., & Korb, K. (2014). Digital Genesis: Computers, Evolution and Artificial Life. Presented at the 7th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Philosophy of Science Conference: Evolutionary Thinking, University of Sydney, 20-22 March 2014. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02100
PDF Full details
```
@article{taylor2014digital,
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Dorin, Alan and Korb, Kevin},
  title = {Digital Genesis: Computers, Evolution and Artificial Life},
  journal = {Presented at the 7th Munich-Sydney-Tilburg Philosophy of Science Conference: Evolutionary Thinking, University of Sydney, 20-22 March 2014},
  month = mar,
  year = {2014},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02100},
  category = {workshop},
  keywords = {history}
}
```
Taylor, T. (2003). Evolving Interaction in Artificial Systems: An historical overview and future directions. In P. McOwan, K. Dautenhahn, & C. L. Nehaniv (Eds.), Abstracts from the Evolvability and Interaction Symposium, held at Queen Mary, University of London, UK, in October 2003. University of Hertfordshire Computer Science Technical Report No. 393.
Full details
```
@incollection{taylor2003evolving,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {Evolving Interaction in Artificial Systems: An historical overview and future directions},
  booktitle = {Abstracts from the Evolvability and Interaction Symposium, held at Queen Mary, University of London, UK, in October 2003},
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McMullin, B., Taylor, T., & von Kamp, A. (2001). Who Needs Genomes? Proceedings of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology and Genome Information Systems and Technology, CBGIST 2001, 250–254. Duke University, USA.
PDF Full details
```
@inproceedings{mcmullin2001who,
  author = {McMullin, Barry and Taylor, Tim and {von Kamp}, Axel},
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  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology and Genome Information Systems and Technology, CBGIST 2001},
  year = {2001},
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  address = {Duke University, USA},
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  keywords = {selfrep}
}
```
Taylor, T. (2000). Some Representational and Ecological Aspects of Evolvability. In C. L. Nehaniv (Ed.), Proceedings of the Evolvability Workshop at the the Seventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life 7) (pp. 41–44). Retrieved from http://homepages.herts.ac.uk/ comqcln/al7ev/cnts.html
PDF Full details
```
@inproceedings{taylor2000some,
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
  title = {Some Representational and Ecological Aspects of Evolvability},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Evolvability Workshop at the the Seventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life 7)},
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}
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Taylor, T. (1999). On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability. In D. Floreano, J.-D. Nicoud, & F. Mondada (Eds.), Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 1999 (pp. 94–103). https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48304-7_15

PDF Full details

@inproceedings{taylor1999selfreproduction,
  title = {On Self-Reproduction and Evolvability},
  author = {Taylor, Tim},
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  keywords = {selfrep, cosmos}
}

Taylor, T. J. (1999). From Artificial Evolution to Artificial Life (PhD thesis). School of Informatics, College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh.
PDF Full details
```
@phdthesis{taylor1999artificial,
  author = {Taylor, Timothy John},
  title = {From Artificial Evolution to Artificial Life},
  school = {School of Informatics, College of Science and Engineering, University of Edinburgh},
  year = {1999},
  uri = {http://hdl.handle.net/1842/361},
  category = {dissertation},
  keywords = {selfrep, oee, cosmos}
}
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Taylor, T., & Hallam, J. (1997). Studying Evolution with Self-Replicating Computer Programs. In P. Husbands & I. Harvey (Eds.), Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life (pp. 550–559). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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```
@inproceedings{taylor1997studying,
  title = {Studying Evolution with Self-Replicating Computer Programs},
  author = {Taylor, Tim and Hallam, John},
  pages = {550--559},
  booktitle = {Fourth European Conference on Artificial Life},
  editor = {Husbands, Phil and Harvey, Inman},
  publisher = {MIT Press},
  address = {Cambridge, MA},
  isbn = {0262581574},
  year = {1997},
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  keywords = {cosmos, selfrep}
}
```