About Org(SB-EAI)

MUR Call: Decreto Direttoriale n. 104 del 02-02-2022, PRIN2022

Participants: 

• Pasquale Stano, University of Salento (Unit 1, U1; coordinator); 

• Luisa Damiano, IULM (Unit 2, U2); 

• Andrea Roli, University of Bologna (Unit 3, U3)

Duration: 24 months

Main ERC field: SH - Social Sciences and Humanities

Possible other ERC field: LS - Life Sciences

ERC subfields: (1) SH4_13 Philosophy of science, epistemology, logic; (2) LS2_13 Systems biology

Keywords: minimal embodied cognition; complex systems biology; autopoiesis; artificial life; chemical networks; epistemology of synthetic models

Brief description: Org(SB-EAI) aims at introducing a new approach to Embodied Artificial Intelligence (EAI). The intended groundbreaking goal of the project is this: Integrating EAI’s modeling of cognition with techniques from Synthetic Biology, in order to generate 'deep' artificial models of natural cognitive processes useful for research and applicative purposes. 

The project, developed in the field of Philosophy of AI, shares EAI’s programmatic goal. In particular, it complies with EAI’s positive emphasis on the role played by the biological body in cognition, and the related focalization more on 'complete agents' – artificial agents endowed with a ‘body’, i.e. robots – rather than on computer programs. Org(SB-EAI), however, questions EAI’s modeling of the biological body. The project converges with current criticisms in considering that EAI concentrates on bodily superficial aspects (e.g., materials and anatomical structures) and neglects the body’s organization, i.e., the network of functional relations generating its most specific feature – metabolic self-production. Org(SB-EAI) recognizes that this gap limits EAI to an imitative modeling of the  target processes, and bounds EAI’s robots to be incapable of cognitive performances similar to those of living systems.  The Org(SB-EAI) project draws on these criticisms to introduce a new, ‘organizational’ approach to EAI, concentrating on the biological organization. 

Recent attempts of founding an organizational EAI are limited by their exclusive attention for hardware and software models – the synthetic models traditionally produced by AI. What is missing is the introduction in EAI of wetware chemical models, particularly suitable for the artificial implementation of the biological organization. Org(SB-EAI) aims at filling this gap by laying the grounds of an organizational EAI based on techniques from Synthetic Biology, whose wetware modeling of biological processes have strong implications in minimal EAI and future biotechnologies. 

Org(SB-EAI)’s architecture relies on three cornerstones, whose interconnections define its strength and originality:

• a trans-disciplinary team, integrating philosophy of cognitive biology, epistemology of synthetic models, complex systems biology, synthetic biology and artificial life;

• autopoiesis as main theoretical and epistemological framework;

• a philosophical grounding capable of defining a robust taxonomy of expected results based on experimental studies of possibilities/constraints.