Top

AI & SOCIETY

Published in:

27-07-2022 | Original Article

Towards a bioinformational understanding of AI

Authors: Rahul D. Gautam, Balaganapathi Devarakonda

Published in: AI & SOCIETY | Issue 2/2024

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

The article seeks to highlight the relation between ontology and communication while considering the role of AI in society and environment. Bioinformationalism is the technical term that foregrounds this relationality. The study reveals instructive consequences for philosophy of technology in general and AI in particular. The first section introduces the bioinformational approach to AI, focusing on three critical features of the current AI debate: ontology of information, property-based vs. relational AI, and ontology vs. constitution of AI. When applied to the themes of relationality and non-anthropocentric communications, bioinformational insights highlight an inclusive and meaningful groundwork for understanding AI by ‘relating’ it with society and the environment through an engagement with the ongoing critique of human supremacy. In the second section, we move from ‘relating’ AI to ‘rewilding’ AI by proposing taxonomical classification for certain technological entities. We situate our proposal in the broader personhood debate with the proposal of taxonomical ranking. In the last section, we show an instance of a relational approach steeped in substantialist ontology by introducing the fourth feature of the AI debate. A broad critique of Floridi’s philosophy of information introduces this fourth feature from the domain of philosophy and sociology to address various theoretical and ecological problems with current relational accounts. In doing so, we argue for ‘communication’ to be the replacement of ‘information’ as the moral unit. A bioinformational understanding of AI advocates taking ontological commitments seriously at all levels of informational and technological processes and products.

previous article Understanding user sensemaking in fairness and transparency in algorithms: algorithmic sensemaking in over-the-top platform

next article Artificial intelligence and the secret ballot

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Appiah C, Arndt C, Siemsen K, Heitmann A, Staubitz A, Selhuber-Unkel C (2019) Living materials herald a new era in soft robotics. Adv Mater 31(36):1807747. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201807747CrossRef

Bateson G (2000) Steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London

Beniger J (1986) The control revolution: economic and technological origins of the information society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

Bessant J (2020) Making-up people: youth, truth and politics, 1st edn. Routledge, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429296970CrossRef

Bourdieu P, Wacquant L (1992) An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago, Chicago

Bowers CA (2012) Gregory Bateson’s contribution to understanding the linguistic roots of the ecological crisis. Trumpeter 28:1

Braidotti R (2013) The posthuman. Polity, Cambridge

Brey P, Søraker JH (2009) Philosophy of computing and information technology. In: Meijers A (ed) Philosophy of technology and engineering sciences, Vol IX, in D. Gabbay, P. Thagard and J. Woods (eds), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 1341–1408

Bruderer H (2020) Milestones in analog and digital computing, 2 volumes, 3rd edition, 2113 pages, 715 images (88% in color), 151 tables. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40974-6

Butail S, Ladu F, Spinello D, Porfiri M (2014) Information flow in animal-robot interactions. Entropy. https://doi.org/10.3390/e16031315CrossRef

Cassirer E (1923) Substance and function. Open Court, Chicago

Coeckelbergh M (2010) The moral standing of machines: towards a relational and non-cartesian moral hermeneutics. Philos Technol 27:61–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0133-8CrossRef

Coeckelbergh M (2014) Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration. Ethics Inform Technol 12:209–221. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-010-9235-5CrossRef

Daane JM, Blum N, Lanni J, Boldt H, Iovine MK, Higdon CW, Harris MP (2021) Modulation of bioelectric cues in the evolution of flying fishes. Curr Biol 31(22):5052-5061.e5058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.054CrossRef

Deacon TW (2013) Incomplete nature: how mind emerged from matter. W. W. Norton, New York; London

Dewey J, Bentley A (1949) Knowing and the known. Beacon Press, Boston

Dretske FI (1981) Knowledge and the flow of information. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge

Elhacham E, Ben-Uri L, Grozovski J, Bar-On YM, Milo R (2020) Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass. Nature 588(7838):442–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3010-5CrossRef

Elias N (1978) What is sociology? Trans. Morrissey G, Mennell S, Jephcott E. Columbia University Press, New York

Emirbayer M (1997) Manifesto for a relational sociology. Am J Sociol 103:281–317CrossRef

Ereshefsky M (1991) Species, higher taxa, and the units of evolution. Philos Sci 58(1):84–101. https://doi.org/10.1086/289600CrossRef

Estrada D (2020) Human supremacy as posthuman risk. J Sociotechn Crit 1(1):1–40. https://doi.org/10.25779/j5ps-dy87MathSciNetCrossRef

Floridi L (1999) Information ethics: on the theoretical foundations of computer ethics. Ethics Inform Technol 1(1), 37–56. Reprinted, with some modifications, in The Ethicomp J, 1(1) 2004, http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/journal/articles/floridi_l_philosophical.pdf

Floridi L (2009) Against digital ontology. 168(1), 151–178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9334-6

Floridi L (2014) The fourth revolution—how the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Floridi L (2017) The logic of design as a conceptual logic of information. Mind Mach 27:495–519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-017-9438-1CrossRef

Floridi L, Taddeo M (2018) Romans would have denied robots legal personhood. Nature 557:309–309. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05154-5CrossRef

Fowler C (2018) Relational personhood revisited. Camb Archaeol J 26(3):397–412CrossRef

Gellers JC (2021) Rights for robots: artificial intelligence, animal and environmental law. Routledge, London

George A, Ravindran S (2010) Protein templates in hard tissue engineering. Nano Today 5(4):254–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nantod.2010.05.005CrossRef

Gillings MR, Hilbert M, Kemp DJ (2016) Information in the biosphere: biological and digital worlds. Trends Ecol Evol 31(3):180–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2015.12.013CrossRef

Grear A (2015) Deconstructing anthropos: a critical legal reflection on ‘anthropocentric’ law and anthropocene ‘humanity.’ Law Crit 26(3):225–249CrossRef

Guice J (1999) Designing the future: the culture of new trends in science and technology. Res Policy 28(1):81–98CrossRef

Gunkel DJ (2012) The machine question: critical perspectives on AI. Robot Ethics. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8975.001.0001CrossRef

Gunkel DJ (2018) The other question: can and should robots have rights? Ethics Inf Technol 20:87–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9442-4CrossRef

Güntürkün O, Bugnyar T (2016) Cognition without Cortex. Trends Cogn Sci 20(4):291–303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.02.001CrossRef

Haff P (2014) Technology as a geological phenomenon: Implications for human well-being. Geol Soc Lond Spec Publ 395:301–309. https://doi.org/10.1144/SP395.4CrossRef

Hall BK (1999) The paradoxical platypus. Bioscience 49(3):211–218. https://doi.org/10.2307/1313511CrossRef

Haraway DJ (2008a) When species meet. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

Haraway D (2008b) The companion species manifesto. In: Haraway D (ed) Manifestly haraway. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London, pp 91–198

Haraway DJ (2016) Staying with the trouble: making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, DurhamCrossRef

Jablonka E, Lamb MJ (2006) The evolution of information in the major transitions. 239(2):236–246 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.08.038

Jacob F (1973) The logic of Life. Translated by Betty Spillman. Pantheon, New York

Jacobson H (1955) Information, reproduction and the origin of life. Am Sci 43(1):119–127. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27826595

Jansen P, Stearns B, Rowena R, David W, Philp B, Alice F, Ning W (2018) “State-of-the-Art Review.” Draft of the D4.1 deliverable submitted to the European Commission on April 13, 2018. A report for The SIENNA Project, an EU H2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 741716

Jianyin S (2018) Antinomies of culture and critique of modernity: evaluating György Márkus’s theory of culture from the perspective of China. Thesis Eleven 144(1):3–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513618755774CrossRef

Jones RA (2013) Relationalism through social robotics. J Theory Soc Behav 43(4):405–424CrossRef

Kaewunruen S, Ngamkhanong C, Xu S (2020) Large amplitude vibrations of imperfect spider web structures. Sci Rep 10:19161. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-76269-xCrossRef

Kendig C, Witteveen J (2020) The history and philosophy of taxonomy as an information science. Hist Philos Life Sci 42(3):1–9CrossRef

Kohn E (2013) How forests think: toward an anthropology beyond the human. University of California Press, BerkeleyCrossRef

Kriegman S, Blackiston D, Levin M, Bongard J (2021) Kinematic self-replication in reconfigurable organisms. Proc Natl Acad Sci 118(49):e2112672118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2112672118CrossRef

Levin M (2022) Technological approach to mind everywhere: an experimentally-grounded framework for understanding diverse bodies and minds [hypothesis and theory]. Front Syst Neurosci 16

Li A, Zhang W, Ghaffarivardavagh R et al (2016) Towards uniformly oriented diatom frustule monolayers: experimental and theoretical analyses. Microsyst Nanoeng 2:16064. https://doi.org/10.1038/micronano.2016.64CrossRef

Lichtenegger HC, Schöberl T, Bartl MH, Waite H, Stucky GD (2002) High abrasion resistance with sparse mineralization: copper biomineral in worm jaws. Science 298(5592):389–392. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1075433CrossRef

Lior A (2020) AI entities as AI Agents: artificial intelligence liability and the AI Respondeat superior analogy. Mitchell Hamline Law Rev 46(5):Article 2. Available at: https://open.mitchellhamline.edu/mhlr/vol46/iss5/2

Marx L (2010) Technology: the emergence of a hazardous concept. Technol Cult 51:561–577CrossRef

Maximino C, Silva RXDC, da Silva SDNS, Rodrigues LDSDS, Barbosa H, de Carvalho TS, Herculano AM (2015) Non-mammalian models in behavioral neuroscience: consequences for biological psychiatry. Front Behav Neurosci 9:233–233. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00233CrossRef

McShane K (2014) Individualist biocentrism vs holism revisited. Les Ateliers De l’éthique/The Ethics Forum 9(2):130–148. https://doi.org/10.7202/1026682arCrossRef

Miller GA (1983) Informavores. In: Machlup F, Mansfield U (eds) The study of information: interdisciplinary messages, Wiley-Interscience, pp. 111–113, ISBN 0-471-88717-X

Mills CW (2011) The political economy of personhood. On the Human, National Humanities Center. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-thehuman/2011/04/political-economy-of-personhood/

Nussbaum MC (1998) Cultivating humanity. Harvard University PressCrossRef

Nussbaum MC (2010) Not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities (vol 2). Princeton University Press

Parviainen J (2016) Quantified bodies in the checking loop: analyzing the choreographies of biomonitoring and generating big data. Hum Technol 12(1):56–73. https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.201605192620CrossRef

Peters JD (1988) Information: notes toward a critical history. J Commun Inq 12(2):9–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/019685998801200202CrossRef

Peters MA, Jandrić P, McLaren P (2020) Viral modernity? Epidemics, infodemics, and the ‘bioinformational’ paradigm. Educ Philos Theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1744226CrossRef

Politi Y, Metzler Rebecca A, Abrecht M, Gilbert B, Wilt Fred H, Sagi I, Gilbert PUPA (2008) Transformation mechanism of amorphous calcium carbonate into calcite in the sea urchin larval spicule. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105(45):17362–17366. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0806604105CrossRef

Prabhakar B, Dektar KN, Gordon DM (2012) The regulation of ant colony foraging activity without spatial information. PLoS Comput Biol 8(8):e1002670. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002670MathSciNetCrossRef

Prasad Shastri V (2015) Biomineralization: a confluence of materials science, biophysics, proteomics, and evolutionary biology. MRS Bull 40(6):473–477. https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2015.118CrossRef

Quispe-Huamanquispe DG, Gheysen G, Kreuze JF (2017) Horizontal gene transfer contributes to plant evolution: the case of agrobacterium T-DNAs [Mini Review]. Front Plant Sci 8

Römer L, Scheibel T (2008) The elaborate structure of spider silk: structure and function of a natural high performance fiber. Prion 2(4):154–161. https://doi.org/10.4161/pri.2.4.7490CrossRef

Sahib MA, Abdulnabi AR, Mohammed MA (2018) Improving bacterial foraging algorithm using non-uniform elimination-dispersal probability distribution. Alex Eng J 57(4):3341–3349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.12.010CrossRef

Salwiczek LH, Emery NJ, Schlinger B, Clayton NS (2009) The development of caching and object permanence in Western scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica): which emerges first? J Comp Psychol 123(3):295–303. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016303CrossRef

Santana C (2018) Biodiversity is a chimera, and chimeras aren’t real. Biol Philos 33(1):15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9626-2MathSciNetCrossRef

Schatzberg E (2018) Technology: critical history of a concept. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, LondonCrossRef

Shaviro S (2011) The universe of things. Theory Event. https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2011.0027CrossRef

Stibbe A (2015) Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by. Routledge and Taylor & Francis, London, New YorkCrossRef

Suzman J (2021) Work: a deep history, from the stone age to the age of robots. Penguin Press, New York

Taylor KA (2019) Meaning diminished: toward metaphysically modest semantics. Oxford University Press, OxfordCrossRef

Veblen T (1914) The instinct of workmanship and the state of the industrial arts. The Macmillan Company, New York

Venturi M (2014) Iodine, PUFAs and iodolipids in health and diseases: an evolutionary perspective

Vigh B, Manzano MJ, Zádori A, Frank CL, Lukáts A, Röhlich P, Szél A, Dávid C (2002) Nonvisual photoreceptors of the deep brain, pineal organs and retina. Histol Histopathol 17(2):555–590. https://doi.org/10.14670/HH-17.555CrossRef

Vigliocco G, Perniss P, Vinson D (2014) Language as a multimodal phenomenon: implications for language learning, processing and evolution. Philos Trans R Soc Lond Ser B, Biol Sci 369(1651):20130292–20130292. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2013.0292CrossRef

von Neumann J (1966) Theory of self-reproducing automata. Burks AW (ed). University of Illinois Press, Urbana

Williams R (1983) Culture and society: a vocabulary of culture and society. Oxford University Press, USA

Winograd T (1995) Thinking machines: can there be? Are we? Informatica (Slovenia) 19

Wittgenstein L, Anscombe GEM (1997) Philosophical investigations. Blackwell, Oxford

Title: Towards a bioinformational understanding of AI
Authors: Rahul D. Gautam
Balaganapathi Devarakonda
Publication date: 27-07-2022
Publisher: Springer London
Published in: AI & SOCIETY / Issue 2/2024
Print ISSN: 0951-5666
Electronic ISSN: 1435-5655
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01529-5

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Other articles of this Issue 2/2024

Are AI systems biased against the poor? A machine learning analysis using Word2Vec and GloVe embeddings

The rise of machine learning in the academic social sciences

Gender preferences for robots and gender equality orientation in communication situations

Autonomous weapon systems and jus ad bellum

The scientist of the scientist

Apocalypse now: no need for artificial general intelligence

Premium Partner