Artificial intelligence is an example of an alloreferential domain of interaction.
Machines differ from living systems not in the principles used for their function, but in their reference. The organization of machines is such that they always have an alloreferential domain of interactions, that is, the relevance of their functioning is determined by how they satisfy the desires of their maker. Living systems, on the contrary, as a result of their basic circular organization, necessarily have a self-referred domain of interactions; that is, the relevance of their functioning is determined by how it permits the maintenance of their basic circularity. If we consider the ordinary machine as alloreferential machines, we can consider the living systems as self-referential machines.
The artificial cognitive systems can be of two kinds:
1) those that will describe their interactions in our terms, that is, recognize what we recognize
2) those that will mak descriptions in their own terms, but which we have to map afterwards into ours. (NC 21)
This page was last updated on July 11, 1996, by Rob Sable.