We all know the theory of evolution which mentions that plants and animals have evolved for millions of years to get to this point. For all these years plants and animal species have developed many skills and behaviors so that they could survive in a constantly developing environment.
All these plants and animal species were developed from nature and through the process of natural selection. Although humans are subjected to the same physical forces, chemical reactions, and natural selection processes that govern all living beings. Natural selection may have provided humans with a much larger playing field than it has given to any other organism, but the field still had its limitations and we are now beginning to break the laws of natural selection, replacing them with the laws of intelligent design.
In the last few decades, we as a species have developed a new form of inorganic being the computer programs. The recent developments in machine learning enable computer programs initially coded by human engineers to evolve by themselves, these programs can then acquire new information on their own, teach themselves new skills, and gain insights that go beyond those of their human creators. With the help of this new innovation, we are creating products and objects that can someday start to behave on their own without any need for human supervision.
Following are three shining examples of this new LIFE FORM:
1. Artificial Intelligence: MuZero
AlphaGo was the first computer program to defeat a professional human Go player, the first to defeat a Go world champion, and is arguably the strongest Go player in history. AlphaGo learned the game of Go by analyzing various ways humans played Go then it played thousands of times with different versions of itself. Over time, AlphaGo improved and became increasingly stronger and better at learning and decision-making. Then it went on and defeated Go world champions in different global arenas and arguably became the greatest Go player of all time. There is a documentary about this, if you want to see it I have mentioned the link in the comments.
Then the company developed another version of this algorithm AlphaZero which started from scratch and trained itself to play chess, shogi, and Go, beating a world-champion computer program in each case.
The latest version of the algorithm is known as MuZero, it takes these ideas one step further. It matches the performance of AlphaZero on Go, chess and shogi, while also mastering a range of complex Atari games, all without being told the rules of any games. While this is still in the early days, these powerful learning and planning algorithms can be used to tackling new problems in messy real-world environments where the “rules of the game” are unknown.
2. Robotics: Boston Dynamics “Atlas”
Atlas is the world’s most dynamic humanoid robot. The robot has so advanced control system and hardware that it gives the robot the power and balance to show human-level swiftness in its movements. If you have not seen the videos of what this robot is capable of I suggest you watch some on YouTube.
3. Autonomous Cars: Tesla Motors
Self-driving autonomous vehicles are the future of the automotive industry. Current Tesla cars can drive you from your home to the nearest restaurant and back with minimum inputs from the drivers. The cars have a central database on which it stores all the roads which it has traveled. Therefore if another Tesla is driving on the same road it already knows the road and can drive accordingly. So in the future, you will just new to call your car from the garage, input your desired location and the car will take you there.
These new Life Forms cannot be found organically in nature, we as a species have created these new beings. All of these are in their early stages of evolution and only time will tell what new limits can be conquered.
