A sense of humour is not a survival trait. So why did we evolve it then?

Imagine, if you will, this hypothetical scenario... A robot is created, most likely by a group of engineers and roboticists at MIT.

Nothing special there, those guys are always spitting out new robots.

However, this particular robot is based on the research of [some dude - I've lost the link. Sorry.] who was researching ways of making robots create more robots; he gained his PhD when the robot he made created another robot, which walked out the door.

So we have, at this point, a robot which can create more robots. Cool.

If we add to that the ability for it to learn - which is easy enough to do - and the ability to perceive its environment and respond to it in some sensible way... then we can have a robot which can learn from its environment, without any further human interaction.

This has already been done too, by simply using what's known as a backpropogation multilayer noisy neural network simulation, with poly-perceptron input, and behaviour reinforcement built in. The ideas of these things are a lot simpler than their names suggest, athough they're still tricky to implement correctly.

Although, as I say, that has also been done already, so any tick of the clock we should have what is known as the Singularity, which is described as being the event when smarter-than-human minds exist for the first time.

What hasn't been done yet is to join the two concepts together, in the one robot.

If that were to happen, though, then many science-fiction fantasies would become true; the world would view the beginning of the age of intelligent machines.

Not only that, but these particular machines would be able to reproduce. Since they can learn, they could also learn to adjust their design based on environmental pressures.

Thus they would not only reproduce, but breed.

Darwinian evolution teaches us that these machines would, over several thousand generations - possibly several million - grow and change and adapt to their environment beyond the imagination of their original creators.

It is possible - some would say it's even likely - that they would encroach on the environmental 'niche' of organisms who were already inhabitants there, and attempt to drive them out.

This is the point where futuristic sci-fi writers sit up and take notice; because it is always on the edges of a concept where the most drama, conflict, and, essentially, the best stories, can be found.

But this is not a science-fiction fantasy. This is a hypothesis by someone who has more clue than most.

So what if this actually happened?

It would be likely, were this to actually happen, that mankind would do one of three things:

1. To do nothing. This might happen, given humankind's NIMBY* attitude in the past. However this could well lead to humans being evicted from our current environmental niche - perhaps even completely eradicated. Of course, a lot of other species would disappear first, making people a lot more aware of any threat, and thus making this alternative less likely over time.
2. We recognise this threat early on in the piece... early enough to destroy these new machines before they destroy us. This reaction is very likely, were this scenario to eventuate. Mankind does not have a proud history of assimilation with other species, but instead one of annihilation.
3. Recognising the threat to our continued existence, and acting in an enlightened manner towards our newest species, mankind instead decides to remove the robots to somewhere where they can do us no harm, but can still be observed for the sake of education and interest.

Let's take a closer look at that last option...

If you can continue this hypothesis for a little longer... stay with me on this one...

Given that anywhere on this planet is likely to remain an unsuitable place for such machines to live, and that they are (or would be) made of metal and transistors - and as such could put up with extremes of both temporal and temperature kind - it would be a sensible option to:

1. Send them through space to another planet somewhere, or
2. Perhaps to lock them into some kind of simulated reality from which they could never escape.¹

We have, then, a type of robot which can view the world around it and can otherwise perceive its environment, can move about quite freely in it, can learn from its experiences, and has plenty of raw materials with which to reproduce profusely. Not only that, but it has literally all the time and space in the world to do so.

Imagine, if you will, time passing. Perhaps it will help your mental eye to have images of the sun flicking across the sky, followed by the stars, chased again by the sun, in a neverending cascade.

Years pass. Decades, like the briefest flicker of imagination. Millenia speed past, faster and faster, until...

...STOP!

Millions of years later, and what do we see? Our little robot friends, who can rightly be called robots no longer. For they have all grown up... or... should I say down?

For what we have, in fact, is a fantastic verification of the miracle of evolution. Our robots have grown and learnt, and changed and evolved, in so many different ways that they have made the most incredible transition of all; they have discarded their metal skins in exchange for biological ones. Mineral has been usurped by vegetable.

What remains is the tiniest speck. A single cell. A protozoa.

What was previously cold metal casing is now neucleii. What was previously seen as perambulatory periphirals have now been replaced by
flagellum. What was previously lines of code scoring along electronic pathways, have given up their place for chemicals, twisted and entwined in a double-helix any programmer would be proud of.

You get the idea. Basically in allowing these robots to continuously upgrade their design, they one day swapped a mineral-based body for a biological one.

Say what?

You may find this hard to believe, but is it really so impossible? This situation is not so far from possible as to be unbelievable.

It is possible, although our human mind may not want to accept these possibilities. There is a term called Anthropocentricity, for which the definition is to shun the possibility of any point of view which is not related to by the viewer.

I personally encounter it all the time, in my studies of Artificial Intelligence. People don't have any emperical evidence, yet simply don't want to belive that computers can be capable of cognition.

They say that computers will never be able to play chess better than a human, or to write poems, or to view a flower with a poetic eye, or to hold a conversation which can fool another person, or to lie. Sometimes, people will say that an entity has to have a brain made out of neurons the same as humans do, in order to be able to think, or to be aware of its surroundings or itself, or to have a consciousness.

Well guess what? It's already happened. The computer known as Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a game of chess. At the time, Kasparov was the world chess champion. Automatic poetry writers are a dime a dozen on the internet. And the creators of the entity known as Alice won the Loebner prize for passing Turing's test for Artificial Intelligence, by fooling a panel of expert judges into thinking that she was a real woman.

Anthropocentricity is simply another form of bigotry, but that of bigotry between species, instead of between gender, race or religion.

The assertion that machines could never become biological entities may stand up to the test of time only as well as the assertion that machines could never think.

Did I mention that this hypothesis had a PG rating?

Anyway, to continue with our imaginings, we need only to add several million years more before our protozoic bacterium becomes a multicelled organism, in accordance with Darwinian evolution.

Add several thousand years to that, and we have a continuation of the creation you all know so well... even though some of you don't believe it.

The interesting thing though, is when the evolution of this new type of life form advances far enough that it gives rise to a new consciousness... a new way of thinking.

Instead of being concerned primarily with survival and adaptation, one of the branches of different species on this planet also learn how to use tools, and becomes aware of itself and its surroundings in a way it never had before. It can now think about its own thought processes, and its thoughts on its own thought processes.

It develops language, and becomes more able to communicate clearly its ideas about the universe.

It becomes cultured, and learns to live off the work of the rest of its kind.

Eventually, it learns to create robots. And soon after, it becomes god.

The word 'god' after all, simply means 'creator'. It hasn't yet learnt that in order to create something it must also destroy something else; this is the nature of creation. But it will learn.

Meanwhile, our creators exist. Perhaps in a time and space entirely incomprehensible to us, but they're there. Watching us. Observing. And learning.

We've given them some funny names in our time. God. Aliens. Demons. But none so funny as the names they have for themselves, or the names they have for us.

So what do you think, of my hypothesis?

As far as hypotheses go, I think it's not too bad. It explains almost everything about our reality; where we came from, where we're going, why we look like we do, why people act as they are. It happily proves that creationism and darwinism aren't mutually exclusive; the two can both be true at the same time.

In fact, this hypothesis can be shown to prove absolutely everything about our reality, as far as I can figure, except for only one thing.