Jozef Kelemen Book order

Products of modern artificial intelligence (AI) have mostly been formed by the views, opinions and goals of the “insiders”, i.e. people usually with engineering background who are driven by the force that can be metaphorically described as the pursuit of the craft of Hephaestus. However, since the present-day technology allows for tighter and tighter mergence of the “natural” everyday human life with machines of immense complexity, the responsible reaction of the scientific community should be based on cautious reflection of what really lies beyond AI, i.e. on the frontiers where the tumultuous ever-growing and ever-changing cloud of AI touches the rest of the world. The chapters of this boo are based on the selected subset of the presentations that were delivered by their respective authors at the conference “Beyond AI: Interdisciplinary Aspects of Artificial Intelligence” held in Pilsen in December 2011. From its very definition, the reflection of the phenomena that lie beyond AI must be inherently interdisciplinary. And so is this book: all the authors took part in a mutual transdisciplinary dialogue after explaining their views on AI not only to a narrow selection of their usual close peers with the same specialisation, but to a much broader audience of various experts from AI engineering, natural sciences, humanities and philosophy. The chapters of this book thus reflect results of such a dialogue.

Gheorghe Păun has played an important role within a wide range of disciplines, from the foundations of traditional computation theory and formal language theory to research gaining its inspiration from living nature. He has significantly contributed to the development of these diverse fields, initiating and pioneering some of them with remarkable imaginativeness and enthusiasm. Gheorghe Păun’s research focusses on systems inspired by structures and processes found in living systems, with the field of membrane computing or P systems being the most important of his initiatives. This Festschrift volume, published to honor Gheorghe Păun on the occasion of his 60 th birthday, includes 16 contributions by his students and collaborators. The research presented aims to gain a better understanding of what computation is, to find better models of computation, and to look for new computing devices inspired by the structure and/or functioning of natural or societal systems. The papers are preceded by an introduction by Solomon Marcus, Gheorghe Păun’s lifelong teacher and mentor, and are organized in topical sections on general computing, grammar systems, membrane systems, and inspirations from natural computing.

Why is the question of the di? erence between living and non-living matter - tellectually so attractive to the man of the West? Where are our dreams about our own ability to understand this di? erence and to overcome it using the ? rmly established technologies rooted? Where are, for instance, the cultural roots of the enterprises covered nowadays by the discipline of Arti? cial Life? Cont- plating such questions, one of us has recognized [6] the existence of the eternal dream of the man of the West expressed, for example, in the Old Testament as follows: . . . the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis, 2. 7). This is the dream about the workmanlike act of the creation of Adam from clay, about the creation of life from something non-living, and the con? dence in the magic power of technologies. How has this dream developed and been converted into a reality, and how does it determine our present-day activities in science and technology? What is this con? dence rooted in? Then God said: “Let us make man in our image. . . ” (Genesis, 1. 26). Man believes in his own ability to repeat the Creator’s acts, to change ideas into real things, because he believes he is godlike. This con? dence is – using the trendy Dawkins’ term – perhaps the most important cultural meme of the West.