About a month ago, the web was all agog over the announcement of
DARPA’s Physical Intelligence program — Wired wrote: The idea
behind Darpa’s latest venture, called “Physical Intelligence”
(PI) is to prove, mathematically, that the human mind is nothing
more than parts and energy. In other words, all brain activities
— reasoning, emoting, processing sights and smells — derive from
physical mechanisms at work, acting according to the principles
of “thermodynamics in open systems.” Thermodynamics is founded
on the conversion of energy into work and heat within a system
(which could be anything from a test-tube solution to a planet).
The processes can be summed up in formalized equations and laws,
which are then used to describe how systems react to changes in
their surroundings. Now, the military wants a new equation: one
that explains the human mind as a thermodynamic system. Once
that’s done, they’re asking for “abiotic, self-organizing
electronic and chemical systems” that display the PI principles.
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