claim
active
claim:21st-century-machines-are-increasingly-unpredictable-and-noisy21st-century machines are increasingly unpredictable and noisy.
Quantum computers, ML systems, and evolved machines exploit uncertainty rather than requiring determinism.
Source paper
extracted_from(2021) · Joshua Bongard · Michael Levin
Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count
Thinkers (1)
thinker
- Grey WaltersupportsPioneer in cybernetics and early robotics showing that simple machines can exhibit complex behavior.
Communities (3)
community
- Cross-scale frameworks linking spatial patterns, diagrams, and simplicity as expressions of care in design.
- Living systems as 21st-century machinesmembers_ofReconceptualizes life and biological complexity through modern computational principles—substrate-dependence, multiscale integration, irreducibility—rather than mechanical reductionism, bridging xenobiology and machine learning circa 2020s.
- Life-machine boundary dissolutionmembers_ofArgues 21st-century machines share properties once unique to living systems, collapsing categorical distinctions.
Frameworks (1)
framework
- Machine BehaviorsupportsEmerging multidisciplinary field at interface of artificial life, machine learning, and synthetic bioengineering that provides updated understanding of machines.
Concepts (1)
concept
- Perverse InstantiationsupportsPhenomenon where evolved or trained machines achieve requested behavior in unexpected, unpredictable ways.
Claims (1)
claim
- Core thesis: the machine metaphor requires updating, not abandoning, in light of modern machine behavior.
Related by similarity (8)
cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edgeEntities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.
- Challenges classical assumption that machines are separate from environment and each other.
- Deep neural networks, swarms, and complex autonomous systems require holistic ethological and cognitive approaches.
- First central claim of the paper: the machine concept used in organicist critiques is historically contingent, not essential
- Argument that predictability is no longer an essential property distinguishing machines from life
- General historical verdict.
- Evolutionary algorithms and self-organizing systems blur distinction between evolved and designed.
- Russell's statement opening Section 2 articulating the core motivation for the Contemplative AI approach
- What is an appropriate definition of machine, and does it apply to all, some, or no living forms?question0.756Central interrogative driving the paper's entire argumentative structure.