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General Lines, Routes and Perspectives of Wetware Embodied AI. From Its Organizational Bases to a Glimpse on Social Chemical Robotics

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Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation (WIVACE 2023)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1977))

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Abstract

In this contribution we would like to put forward a proposal about a novel form of AI, called “Wetware Embodied AI”, based on the construction of bio-chemical dynamical systems intended as models of living and cognitive systems. The ambition is complementing common approaches in robotics and AI, mainly characterized by behavioral imitation of the cognitive processes under inquiry, with more radical approaches, aiming at creating artificial models reproducing (aspects of) the organizational mechanisms underlying the target process in nature. To this aim, we will first recapitulate some aspects of frontier research lines in AI (in particular, Embodied AI and related approaches), and then present a wetware version of it, together with a brief plan for theoretical and experimental investigations. The role of synthetic biology and systems chemistry to accomplish these goals will be highlighted. Considering the connection of this program with the current experimental trends about communicating synthetic cells, a final brief comment on the “social chemical robotics” perspectives closes the article.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    More exhaustive descriptions of the theoretical, technical and applicative aspects of the wetware autopoietic EAI program can be found in, e.g., [12,17]. The epistemological aspects are thoroughly discussed in [18].

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Acknowledgments

Part of this research has been carried out within the project “Org(SB-EAI) – An Organizational Approach to the Synthetic Modeling of Cognition based on Synthetic Biology and Embodied AI” (PRIN-2022, grant number 20222HHXAX), funded by the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR). The discussion presented in Sect. 3.1 has been adapted from our recently published article [47].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. RG-ESA (Research Group on the Epistemology of the Sciences of the Artificial), Department of Communication, Arts and Media, IULM University, Milan, Italy

    Luisa Damiano

  2. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies (DiSTeBA), University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Pasquale Stano

Authors
  1. Luisa Damiano
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  2. Pasquale Stano
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Correspondence to Luisa Damiano or Pasquale Stano .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Marco Villani

  2. University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Stefano Cagnoni

  3. University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Roberto Serra

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Damiano, L., Stano, P. (2024). General Lines, Routes and Perspectives of Wetware Embodied AI. From Its Organizational Bases to a Glimpse on Social Chemical Robotics. In: Villani, M., Cagnoni, S., Serra, R. (eds) Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation. WIVACE 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1977. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57430-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57430-6_10

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