Hear me out, I think we are very close to being able to create digital life. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask me to define what I mean by “life”, but definitions are a sucker’s game. All life that exists on Earth has been produced without a precise theoretical definition of what life is. That being said, there are some things I’d want a thing to do to call something life:
This isn't compatible with the idea that the ecosystem has little free energy.
This "digital life" would loose to classic coorporations.
Existing companies use computers. Computation on a block chain is really expensive. Evolution is dumb, half the things it attempts will be idiotic wastes of money, (even more so than for existing companies). There are plenty of places where an informed human judgement is really useful. Evolution + currentish AI is still too stupid to be competitive.
The blockchain is public. A company can easily copy the code on public blockchain of any digital life that does reliably make money. A company can run the same algorithms on private servers, keeping all their valuable results to themselves, and saving the blockchain overhead.
This isn't compatible with the idea that the ecosystem has little free energy.
This "digital life" would loose to classic coorporations.
Existing companies use computers. Computation on a block chain is really expensive. Evolution is dumb, half the things it attempts will be idiotic wastes of money, (even more so than for existing companies). There are plenty of places where an informed human judgement is really useful. Evolution + currentish AI is still too stupid to be competitive.
The blockchain is public. A company can easily copy the code on public blockchain of any digital life that does reliably make money. A company can run the same algorithms on private servers, keeping all their valuable results to themselves, and saving the blockchain overhead.