
Ask HN: Isn't human body someone's artificial intelligence project? - nyc111
Human body is a complex system that learns by algorithms saved in its system in order to adapt to its environment. Human body makes decisions like &quot;if given this input act like this.&quot; During its lifetime countless commands are triggered and the necessary actions are taken all automatically. The body fights intelligently with intruders. These and many other properties of the human body proves that human body is what we humans call an &quot;artificial intelligence&quot; project. Of course not only human body but all life forms are such intelligent organisms. It remains to find out whose project this is.
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qbrass
You're jumping the gun and assuming it's artificial.

You may have a case for intelligent, but you haven't established that it's
artificial, so you can't claim it's a project, either.

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nyc111
You have a point. But "artificial" has many meanings. This one, "contrived by
art rather than nature" seems to fit. But this implies that nature is stupid.
But we know that nature is intelligent. "By art" implies "by intelligence".
"By nature" implies "without intelligence."

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tobylane
Do we know that nature is smart? Evolution is achieved by trying out whatever
random ideas can be expressed by a gene flip and seeing which one creates more
sex. That's not smart, and nature doesn't do much better than evolution.

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nyc111
We know that nature is not smart. We are not talking about nature but specific
living organisms in nature. All types of life forms make intelligent
decisions. Humans are trying to design and produce machines that can make such
intelligent decisions on their own. The problem is to write algorithms that
evaluate data it receives from the sensors and make the correct decision. The
intelligent part is in writing such algorithms that know what to do in
unexpected situations and can make the right decisions under new situtions and
learn from new situations.

So two main signifiers of intelligence are 1. making decisions on its own and
2. learning from new situations.

Evolution is an academic buzzword that has so many meanings that it has become
meaningless. I avoid using that word. Introducing the word "evolution" to any
discussion only leads to discussions about the meaning of the word evolution.
Can we investigate my original question without using the word evolution? Yes
we can.

You say that "nature doesn't do much better than evolution". We now know that
the fundamental process nature uses to create new types of organisms is
siymbiosis. Different organisms agree to live together and form a new
organism.

