When an octopus is born, it is everything it is going to be. It hatches from its age, fully formed and ready to go. Mother Octopus lays hundreds of thousands of eggs, keeps away predators until the eggs hatch, then they are on their own. Our baby octopus is one of thousands hitting the deck at once. A few survive, sufficient to keep their numbers going, and nothing it learns in life gets passed onto its young. There is no octopus culture, although there is a report of an octopus city in ‘Other Minds’ where a large number octopi live in harmony together on a bed of mollusc shells. There are also reports of octopi forming semi-cogniscent relationships with a person. Octopus can even survive up to an hour out of water, long enough to move from rock pool to rock pool when needs must.
This compares to less than five minutes underwater, or without a heart beat for the average human. What has this got to do with the price of fish and the debate about Artificial Intelligence? Quite a lot, however the relevance of this, will take some time to become clear. Just as a Stand-Up comedian might begin their act with a trivial and apparently pointless joke, only to refer to it again in their closing moments, to leave their audience speechless, clapping wildly and demanding more, we will come back to this point later on.
The most celebrated achievement of AI is to have become the world GO champion while each new incarnation of Alpha GO is becoming better and better at playing GO – outranking the human GO player by a 1000s to 1.
Can Octopi play GO? – definitely not, although they do other clever things, such as using their camouflage to mimic a cloud passing overhead, even though they have never seen a cloud. They are also good with their legs, despite never having competed on Strictly Come Dancing. Eight un-intanglible, colour coordinated colour changing legs, able to catch and open clams, crabs and swim at speed. Achievements certainly worthy of a Glitter Ball, and meanwhile, at this moment, this discussion may seems as random as a Alejandro Jodorowsky film, however hang in and carry on.
The ability of an octopus to coordinate its legs, colour and catch prey is phenomenal, with hesitation, repetition of deviation, they live for one to five years and have been around for all but 300 million years. They have not evolved, although each octopus is able to adapt its individual DNA genetics to a remarkable extent, enabling it to survive in a wide range of environments. It has turned epigenetics into high art.
Although an Octopus cannot play GO, (a board game developed by the Chinese 3-4,000 years ago)- how does an octopus compare to the most advanced AI such as Alpha Zero, the world GO champion compare to an octopus? In other words, how does AI compare to an Octopus? How close is AI to the intelligence of an octopus.