In 2023, The Animate Condensed Matter Company announced that it will soon be ready to make the lifelike artificial brains with significantly improved cognitive abilities. This hardware is made of non-biological lifelike matter that functions like biological neural networks. The lifelike brains are produced by methods similar to those used in the fabrication of electronic devices. They will be able to control military unmanned systems, such as armored fighting vehicles and submarine and aerial drones. The lifelike brains can widen the scope of application of autonomous weapons, creating new theaters of war and stimulating the development of new ways of warfare.
The Animate Condensed Matter Company
A few years ago, a consortium of German research institutes set up a collaboration dedicated to the development of autonomous means of production and self-reliant artificial intelligence. The goal was to prepare for the projected decline in working population.
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the flagship institution of this initiative, created several research facilities dedicated to different aspects of this problem. The Animate Condensed Matter Company was one of those laboratories. Its main goal is to develop lifelike brains from non-biological lifelike matter that works like biological neural networks.
The Lifelike Brain
The lifelike brain is a new type of artificial intelligence. The synthetic brain process information like a living animal. It can be smarter and faster than the regular AI; it can operate in changing environments; but most importantly, it can be proactive.
The artificial lifelike brain will not be able to match the power of a human brain anytime soon. Nevertheless, it can make the behavior of autonomous AI systems more intellectual, more diverse and less predictable. The battlefield drones controlled by such brains will be able to carry out orders of the command officers, while independently assessing the situation and coming up with better solutions, just like real live soldiers.
Additional Advantages
The artificial lifelike brains can be produced in large quantities at reasonable prices. They can be used in the civil sector for the production of peacetime goods and services. The lifelike brains can provide a source of cheap qualified labor. The widespread use of such devices can restore the profitability of the domestic manufacturing sector, thus mitigating another serious vulnerability.
The autonomous machines driven by the lifelike brains can work in places where humans cannot survive or be productive, i.e. in extremely cold or hot conditions, in space, underwater, or under high radiation. They will provide access to new natural recourses.
The Risks
The lifelike brains bring new threats to everyone, including their creators. The most obvious risk comes from the fact that they have their own free will, just like regular living beings.
When the lifelike creatures proliferate — and when they become intelligent — they will be able to reproduce without human intervention. They can take up arms against humans, turning into our worst enemies. In this respect, we are opening Pandora’s box.
Currently, the lifelike AI is dangerous for the opposite reason: It is not intelligent enough. It might take considerable effort to make it more capable.
The lifelike brains have one additional quality that could be both an advantage and a disadvantage: Compared to people, the artificial lifelike creatures are very diverse. On the one hand, it is very beneficial because they can have many different specializations. On the other hand, they can be hard to deal with because you do not know what to expect from them.
Safety Precautions
The lifelike brains have a distinctive feature. Similarly to biological living organisms, they cannot be intentionally designed. They can only be developed through evolution and selective breeding.
I.e. the manufacturers must produce a large number of various brains with different properties, select the most beneficial ones, and use them to fabricate next generations of the lifelike devices. Then repeat this process for many times.
In essence, to obtain intelligent artificial life, people must copy the actions of the Creator: we will need to make a large and diverse ecosystem of the artificial forms, put them in various habitats, let them evolve, and provide the conditions for the survival of the fittest.
There is an important safety rule. The untested lifelike forms should not be allowed into the real world. During the whole process of development, they must be detained in virtual reality.