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Of all the fear-mongering about a purported "robocalypse," perhaps the well-nigh troubling comes from a field not often cited by the critics who brand damning claims about robots, that of evolutionary biology. Evolutionary biologists accept long had a special interest in artificial intelligence. Algorithms from the field of AI have proven extremely useful in modeling theories well-nigh how organisms adapt and evolve. But more recently, some disturbing claims take begun to trickle in from a little discussed sub-discipline of evolutionary biology chosen memetics.

A brief sketch of what memetics is will help in understanding why certain members of this field believe machines pose an existential threat to humanity. You tin can think of memetics equally Darwin's theory of evolution brought to its farthest conclusions. In this understanding of development, even ideas are treated analogously to evolving organisms. The thrust of this concept was formally introduced by Richard Dawkins in his seminal work The Selfish Gene, in which he laid out the concept of memes.

Like a gene, memes replicate, merely instead of existing within embodied organisms, they are "units of civilisation" (an idea, belief, pattern of beliefs, etc.) Dawkins purported that the aforementioned evolutionary principles that employ to genes can exist applied to ideas and beliefs. This has been referred to as the evolutionary algorithm: If y'all have variation, heredity (some means of passing on information), and selection, then yous must get evolution. Now, one of Dawkin's torch bearers, Susan Blackmore, has made an even more radical claim – that the aforementioned principles can be applied to machines. She calls these technological replicators "temes," which can be thought of as memes encapsulated within a technological device.

In her current thesis, humans function in a kind of symbiotic human relationship with the temes. They crave us for their "reproduction" and in render humans proceeds survival advantages.

So far so good, merely here'southward where things get dicey. At bottom, Blackmore suggests humanity is under one behemothic cerebral dissonance fueled delusion, erroneously thinking that the temes are under our control and they can exist programmed with our ethical restraints in mind. Writing for The Guardian, she states, "Replicators are selfish by nature. They become copied whenever and however they tin, regardless of the consequences for us, for other species or for our planet. You cannot requite human values to a massive arrangement of evolving data based on machinery that is being expanded and improved every day."

Her almost convincing example of this is the internet where the process of sorting and selecting data has started happening contained of homo inputs, demonstrated by programs that can modify themselves, and creating their own uncomplicated algorithms.

As a thought experiment, make believe your car was an organism all its ain, subject to the same laws of natural selection driving mammalian evolution (no pun intended). Imagine the car to be like a factor, an unit of data subject to selection pressures (in this instance the whims of human customers), with the power to reproduce (albeit with disquisitional human inputs) and therefore evolving over time.

Because humans are currently a critical component that enables the car organism to keep replicating, and passing on the information embodied in its construction, the theory of temes says we should not deceive ourselves into thinking that the auto has our own interests in mind, or can exist "ethically" programmed to do so.

If we are to accept this heed experiment for a moment, we might likewise discover it surprising that the car seems to be a better replicator than the humans who control information technology, as evidenced by the fact that there are at present more cars than people on the planet. And what happens to the thought experiment when we add that the cars have become cocky-driving, and perhaps someday soon, cocky-amalgam?

While Blackmore's concept of temes is so radical one hesitates to eat it whole, on the other hand, until her theory can be categorically dismissed, prudence might circumspection taking a moment to reconsider projects similar self-driving cars and autonomous robot caregivers in light of memetics and evolutionary biology.