O código da vida, decifrado | Arlindo Oliveira | in Jornal Público

Um problema que, durante mais de meio século, desafiou os melhores grupos de investigação do mundo, foi agora resolvido pelo programa AlphaFold.

Sabe-se, há muito tempo, que determinadas características dos progenitores passam para os descendentes. Porém, os mecanismos de transmissão destas características só foram compreendidos há relativamente pouco tempo. Mendel descobriu, e publicou em 1866, algumas das regras que controlam a transmissão destas características, mas o seu trabalho permaneceu ignorado durante décadas e só foi redescoberto no princípio do século XX. Quando, em 1859, Charles Darwin comunicou a sua descoberta (que partilhou com Alfred Russel Wallace) de que este mecanismo de herança de características estava na origem de todas as espécies que existem no planeta, revolucionou a nossa compreensão do mundo. Existia, afinal, uma resposta simples, óbvia e definitiva para a questão: o que somos, de onde vimos, como aparecemos neste planeta? Mas Darwin não sabia como era feita a transmissão de características nem conhecia o trabalho de Mendel. Foi preciso esperar mais um século até ficar definitivamente esclarecido qual o mecanismo biológico usado pela natureza para passar as características dos progenitores para os seus descendentes, criando a variação, mas também a continuidade, que tornam possível o processo evolutivo.

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The Digital Mind | How Science is Redefining Humanity | Arlindo Oliveira

Following the release in the US,  The Digital Mind, published by MIT Press,  is now available in Europe, at an Amazon store near you (and possibly in other bookstores). The book covers the evolution of technology, leading towards the expected emergence of digital minds.

Here is a short rundown of the book, kindly provided by yours truly, the author.

New technologies have been introduced in human lives at an ever increasing rate, since the first significant advances took place with the cognitive revolution, some 70.000 years ago. Although electronic computers are recent and have been around for only a few decades, they represent just the latest way to process information and create order out of chaos. Before computers, the job of processing information was done by living organisms, which are nothing more than complex information processing devices, created by billions of years of evolution.

Computers execute algorithms, sequences of small steps that, in the end, perform some desired computation, be it simple or complex. Algorithms are everywhere, and they became an integral part of our lives. Evolution is, in itself, a complex and long- running algorithm that created all species on Earth. The most advanced of these species, Homo sapiens, was endowed with a brain that is the most complex information processing device ever devised. Brains enable humans to process information in a way unparalleled by any other species, living or extinct, or by any machine. They provide humans with intelligence, consciousness and, some believe, even with a soul, a characteristic that makes humans different from all other animals and from any machine in existence.

But brains also enabled humans to develop science and technology to a point where it is possible to design computers with a power comparable to that of the human brain. Artificial intelligence will one day make it possible to create intelligent machines and computational biology will one day enable us to model, simulate and understand biological systems and even complete brains with unprecedented levels of detail. From these efforts, new minds will eventually emerge, minds that will emanate from the execution of programs running in powerful computers. These digital minds may one day rival our own, become our partners and replace humans in many tasks. They may usher in a technological singularity, a revolution in human society unlike any other that happened before. They may make humans obsolete and even a threatened species or they make us super-humans or demi-gods.

How will we create these digital minds? How will they change our daily lives? Will we recognize them as equals or will they forever be our slaves? Will we ever be able to simulate truly human-like minds in computers? Will humans transcend the frontiers of biology and become immortal? Will humans remain, forever, the only known intelligence in the universe?

Arlindo L. Oliveira | Presidente do Instituto Superior Técnico