Darwinian evolution has become dogma; AI can rescue what is salvageable.

Journal: Progress in biophysics and molecular biology
PMID:

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI), as an academic discipline, is traceable to the mid-1950s but it is currently exploding in applications with successes and concerns. AI can be defined as intelligence demonstrated by computers, with intelligence difficult to define but it must include concepts of ability to learn, reason, and generalize from a vast amount of information and, we propose, to infer meaning. The type of AI known as general AI, has strong, but unrealized potential both for assessing and also for solving major problems with the scientific theory of Darwinian evolution, including its modern variants and for origin of life studies. Specifically, AI should be applied first to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the assumptions and empirical information underpinning theories of the origin of life and probability of its evolution. AI should then be applied to assess the scientific validity of the theory of how abundant life came to be on earth.

Authors

  • Olen R Brown
    Emeritus of Biomedical Sciences, at the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA. Electronic address: browno@missouri.edu.
  • David A Hullender
    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, USA.