Evolutionary Algorithms and "Intelligent Design"

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/evolutionary-algorithms-and-intelligent.html

Intelligent design (ID)* enthusiasts sometimes claim that artificial intelligences (AIs) cannot possibly be really conscious and intelligent in the same sense that humans are. This smacks of unnaturalism. (We'll leave aside the Turing argument** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test and the fact that many humans appear to be unconscious and unintelligent anyway, and the fact that current AIs are more like Artificial Imbeciles, Facebook's AI being a case in point).

But they can't have their cake and eat it. Computer simulations of dumb, non-teleological, can't-look-ahead, non-magical evolution routinely come up with 'designs'*** that would never have occurred to the creators of such simulations. This proves that evolutionary processes can produce the impression of being intelligently designed while they themselves are dumb. 

Objections like, "These programs and the hardware they run on were intelligently designed" miss the point entirely. The solutions these systems come up with never occurred to the designers, and were the product of algorithms that were themselves mechanical and unintelligent. 

For some examples of evolutionary algorithms creating designoid solutions, see Evolutionary algorithms and their applications to engineering problems. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00521-020-04832-8



* I like to call ID enthusiasts "UFID enthusiasts" - Unidentified Flying Intelligent Designer, echoing 'UFOlogy'. The last thing they want to talk about is the nature of the supposed 'designer'.

** Someone said, I think that it was Arthur C Clarke, that if AIs could convincingly pass the Turing test, but people still objected, they would be demonstrating that they are less intelligent than the AI. 

*** Dawkins calls the natural products of evolution "designoid" products, because they often give the superficial impression of being intelligently designed. But as we know, dumbolution often produces poor products that exhibit the limitations of evolution. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/some.html