Synthetic Biology and Artificial Intelligence: Toward Cross-Fertilization
Luisa Damiano
Epistemology of the Sciences of the Artificial Research Group (ESARG)
Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations, University of Messina
Messina, Italy
luisa.damiano@unime.it
Yutetsu Kuruma
Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI)
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Tokyo, Japan
kuruma@elsi.jp
Pasquale Stano
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies (DiSTeBA)
University of Salento
Lecce, Italy
pasquale.stano@unisalento.it
Abstract
The workshop “What Can Synthetic Biology Offer to Artificial Intelligence?,” hosted by the 14th European Conference on Artificial Life (Lyon, France, 4–8 September 2017), brought together specialists from different disciplines to discuss the possibility of generating synergies between synthetic biology (SB) and artificial intelligence (AI). The specific goal was the exploration of cognition through “understanding-by-building” strategies. The workshop participants were asked to define potentially effective roles that SB could play in the development of the “embodied approach” that characterizes contemporary cognitive science and AI, with a focus on frontier research on minimal artificial life and cognition.
Keywords: embodied AI; embodiment; minimal cognition; minimal life; synthetic biology; synthetic cells; synthetic method
