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Of all the fearfulness-mongering most a purported "robocalypse," perhaps the most troubling comes from a field not often cited by the critics who make damning claims almost 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 almost how organisms adapt and evolve. Simply more recently, some disturbing claims accept begun to trickle in from a piddling discussed sub-discipline of evolutionary biological science called 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. Yous can call back of memetics as Darwin'south theory of evolution brought to its farthest conclusions. In this understanding of evolution, even ideas are treated analogously to evolving organisms. The thrust of this concept was formally introduced by Richard Dawkins in his seminal piece of work The Selfish Cistron, in which he laid out the concept of memes.

Like a gene, memes replicate, simply instead of existing within embodied organisms, they are "units of culture" (an idea, conventionalities, design of beliefs, etc.) Dawkins purported that the same evolutionary principles that employ to genes can be applied to ideas and beliefs. This has been referred to as the evolutionary algorithm: If you lot have variation, heredity (some means of passing on data), and selection, then y'all must get evolution. Now, one of Dawkin'due south torch bearers, Susan Blackmore, has fabricated an even more radical claim – that the same principles tin 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 role in a kind of symbiotic human relationship with the temes. They crave us for their "reproduction" and in return humans gain survival advantages.

Then far and then good, but here's where things get dicey. At lesser, Blackmore suggests humanity is under 1 giant cognitive dissonance fueled mirage, erroneously thinking that the temes are under our command and they tin be programmed with our ethical restraints in mind. Writing for The Guardian, she states, "Replicators are selfish by nature. They get copied whenever and however they tin can, regardless of the consequences for us, for other species or for our planet. You cannot give human values to a massive system of evolving information based on machinery that is beingness expanded and improved every day."

Her near disarming example of this is the net where the process of sorting and selecting information has started happening independent of human inputs, demonstrated by programs that can change themselves, and creating their ain simple algorithms.

As a thought experiment, make believe your car was an organism all its own, subject to the aforementioned laws of natural selection driving mammalian evolution (no pun intended). Imagine the car to be like a gene, an unit of measurement of information subject area to selection pressures (in this case the whims of human customers), with the power to reproduce (admitting with critical human inputs) and therefore evolving over fourth dimension.

Because humans are currently a critical component that enables the motorcar organism to go along replicating, and passing on the information embodied in its structure, the theory of temes says we should not deceive ourselves into thinking that the automobile has our own interests in heed, or can be "ethically" programmed to practise so.

If we are to have this mind experiment for a moment, nosotros might also find it surprising that the automobile seems to exist a better replicator than the humans who control it, every bit evidenced by the fact that at that place are now more cars than people on the planet. And what happens to the idea experiment when nosotros add that the cars accept become self-driving, and possibly someday soon, self-constructing?

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