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The Artificial Life-Form As Entrepreneur: Synthetic Organism-Enterprises and the Reconceptualization of Business

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Matthew Gladden at Georgetown University
Matthew Gladden
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Extended Abstract In this work we demonstrate the theoretical possibility and explore the implications of developing artificial life that functions as an autonomous business within the real-world human economy. By drawing on the Viable Systems Approach (VSA), we introduce the new concept of an "organism-enterprise" that exists simultaneously as both a life-form and a business. We then reconceptualize the anthropocentric understanding of a "business" in a way that allows an artificial life-form to constitute a "synthetic" organism-enterprise (SOE) just as a human being functioning as a sole proprietor constitutes a "natural" organism-enterprise. Practical obstacles to the creation of SOEs are considered, along with possible means of surmounting them. SOEs would move a step beyond current examples of artificial life that produce goods or services within a simulated world or play a limited role within a human business: rather than competing against artificial organisms in a virtual world, SOEs could evolve through competition against human businesses in the real-world economy. We consider concrete examples of SOEs and conclude by highlighting legal, economic, and ethical issues that arise when a single economic ecosystem is shared by competing human and artificial life. The concept of an "organism-enterprise." A business is defined as "the organized effort … to produce and sell, for a profit, the goods and services that satisfy society's needs" (Pride, et al. 2014). Management theorists have drawn on biology to better understand the structure and function of such business organizations. Our research utilizes a systems theory grounded in neurophysiology, the Viable Systems Approach (VSA), that allows us to understand a business as an autopoietic organism or "system" that dwells within the ecosystem of a larger economy or "suprasystem" (Beer, 1981; Barile, et al. 2012). Within this ecosystem, a business must compete against other organisms for limited resources and adapt to environmental demands. In our human economy, individual businesses are born, grow, and die, and taken as a whole, this array of businesses forms an evolvable system. We begin by considering one unique instance in which a business is not simply "analogous to" a living organism, but identical to it: namely, the case of a human being who functions as a sole proprietor. In this situation, a single system simultaneously satisfies all the requirements of being both a life-form and a business. Building on this case, we introduce the idea of a unitary "organism-enterprise," a concept that is already instantiated in the form of at least 20 million "human organism-enterprises" within the United States alone. Reconceptualizing business to include synthetic organism-enterprises. Utilizing VSA and the concept of an organism-enterprise, we analyze the traditional anthropocentric understanding of business as an exclusively human activity to consider whether an artificial life-form could serve as a "synthetic organism-enterprise" (SOE) that is both a life-form and a business. We show that this is indeed possible, but requires us to transform our understanding of business. For example, human businesses are traditionally described as requiring four kinds of resources: 1) human; 2) material; 3) financial; and 4) information. To replace this anthropocentric understanding, we propose that a business be understood more generally as requiring: 1) agent resources; 2) material resources; 3) value-storing media; and 4) information. Similarly, a human business requires functional units filling roles in production, finance, marketing, human capital management, and information technology. Drawing on VSA and the case of a human sole proprietor, we consider the ways in which these functions can be understood more generically, in such a way that they can also be performed by current and proposed forms of artificial life. We give particular attention to the role of "profit" in a human business and formulate an account of its correlate for an SOE: it is the difference between resources expended and received in exchanges in the suprasystem that provides an SOE with a potential for growth and insurance against environmental uncertainties. Figure 1 provides an overview of our reconceptualized "business process cycle," which can be carried out equally well by either a human business or an artificial life-form that has been designed or evolved to fill a business role within a larger economic ecosystem.
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The Artificial Life-Form as Entrepreneur: Synthetic Organism-Enterprises
and the Reconceptualization of Business
Matthew E. Gladden1
1Georgetown University, 37th & O St. NW, Washington, DC 20057
matthew.e.gladden@gmail.com
Extended Abstract
In this work we demonstrate the theoretical possibility and
explore the implications of developing artificial life that
functions as an autonomous business within the real-world
human economy. By drawing on the Viable Systems Approach
(VSA), we introduce the new concept of an “organism-
enterprise” that exists simultaneously as both a life-form and a
business. We then reconceptualize the anthropocentric
understanding of a “business” in a way that allows an artificial
life-form to constitute a “synthetic” organism-enterprise (SOE)
just as a human being functioning as a sole proprietor
constitutes a “natural” organism-enterprise. Practical obstacles
to the creation of SOEs are considered, along with possible
means of surmounting them. SOEs would move a step beyond
current examples of artificial life that produce goods or services
within a simulated world or play a limited role within a human
business: rather than competing against artificial organisms in a
virtual world, SOEs could evolve through competition against
human businesses in the real-world economy. We consider
concrete examples of SOEs and conclude by highlighting legal,
economic, and ethical issues that arise when a single economic
ecosystem is shared by competing human and artificial life.
The concept of an “organism-enterprise.” A business is
defined as “the organized effort … to produce and sell, for a
profit, the goods and services that satisfy society’s needs”
(Pride, et al. 2014). Management theorists have drawn on
biology to better understand the structure and function of such
business organizations. Our research utilizes a systems theory
grounded in neurophysiology, the Viable Systems Approach
(VSA), that allows us to understand a business as an
autopoietic organism or “system” that dwells within the
ecosystem of a larger economy or “suprasystem” (Beer, 1981;
Barile, et al. 2012). Within this ecosystem, a business must
compete against other organisms for limited resources and
adapt to environmental demands. In our human economy,
individual businesses are born, grow, and die, and taken as a
whole, this array of businesses forms an evolvable system.
We begin by considering one unique instance in which a
business is not simply “analogous to” a living organism, but
identical to it: namely, the case of a human being who
functions as a sole proprietor. In this situation, a single system
simultaneously satisfies all the requirements of being both a
life-form and a business. Building on this case, we introduce
the idea of a unitary “organism-enterprise,” a concept that is
already instantiated in the form of at least 20 million “human
organism-enterprises” within the United States alone.
Reconceptualizing business to include synthetic organism-
enterprises. Utilizing VSA and the concept of an organism-
enterprise, we analyze the traditional anthropocentric
understanding of business as an exclusively human activity to
consider whether an artificial life-form could serve as a
“synthetic organism-enterprise” (SOE) that is both a life-form
and a business. We show that this is indeed possible, but
requires us to transform our understanding of business.
For example, human businesses are traditionally described
as requiring four kinds of resources: 1) human; 2) material; 3)
financial; and 4) information. To replace this anthropocentric
understanding, we propose that a business be understood more
generally as requiring: 1) agent resources; 2) material
resources; 3) value-storing media; and 4) information.
Similarly, a human business requires functional units filling
roles in production, finance, marketing, human capital
management, and information technology. Drawing on VSA
and the case of a human sole proprietor, we consider the ways
in which these functions can be understood more generically,
in such a way that they can also be performed by current and
proposed forms of artificial life. We give particular attention
to the role of “profit” in a human business and formulate an
account of its correlate for an SOE: it is the difference
between resources expended and received in exchanges in the
suprasystem that provides an SOE with a potential for growth
and insurance against environmental uncertainties.
Figure 1 provides an overview of our reconceptualized
“business process cycle,” which can be carried out equally
well by either a human business or an artificial life-form that
has been designed or evolved to fill a business role within a
larger economic ecosystem.
Current obstacles to an artificial life-form as organism-
enterprise. Artificial life-forms have already been designed
that are capable of carrying out this entire business process
cycle within the simulated ecosystem of a virtual world
(Kubera, et al. 2011). Similarly, there are artificial life-forms
capable of carrying out parts of this cycle within human
businesses in the economy of the “real world” (Kim and Cho,
2006). However, our survey of the field has not yet identified
any existing artificial life-forms capable of carrying out this
entire business process cycle within the real-world human
economy. We identify a number of obstacles that currently
prevent this from taking place, and we highlight those areas
within the business process cycle that pose the greatest
challenge for the future development of SOEs.
ALIFE 14: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7551/978-0-262-32621-6-ch067
Designing artificial life-forms that can complete the
business process cycle. We briefly consider some approaches
to overcoming these obstacles, so that an artificial life-form
can not only meet the minimal requirements for constituting a
synthetic organism-enterprise but potentially even excel in the
role of entrepreneur (Ihrig, 2012). We especially consider the
potential of virtual goods and cryptocurrencies to overcome
the difficulty of providing an SOE with an effective means of
utilizing value-storing media (Scarle, et al. 2012).
Evolution of artificial life through competition in the
human economy. An SOE producing goods or services of
value to human beings would be capable of competing against
human businesses in the real-world economy. We consider
whether these competitive pressures would be sufficient to
drive evolution among SOEs. By utilizing the concept of
“clockspeed” as a measure of the speed at which businesses
must adapt and compete, we identify industries in which
SOEs would likely evolve at an accelerated rate (Fine, 1998).
Specific examples and practical implications of artificial
life as entrepreneur. An autonomous artificial life-form that
is capable of securing all of the resources needed for survival
and growth directly from the real-world human economy
would in principle no longer be dependent on its human
designer. Such possibilities are not risk-free: we imagine the
case of computer viruses that are capable of evolving self-
adaptive behavior rather than mere polymorphism or
metamorphism (Beckmann, et al. 2009) and that no longer
steal for the financial gain of human cybercriminals but to
provide resources for their own survival, growth, and
autonomously chosen pursuits. We also consider more
optimistic cases, such as the development of artificial life-
forms that build successful “careers” as artists or composers
or IT service-providers within the human economy and that
are able to evolve in response to economic demands, without
the active guidance or support of a human designer. Finally,
we propose areas for future research to address the moral,
legal, and economic issues that will arise from the existence of
synthetic organism-enterprises and the fact that the productive
and competitive capacities of successful SOEs could far
surpass those of traditional human businesses.
References
Barile, S., Pels, J., Polese, F., Saviano, M. (2012). An Introduction to the
Viable Systems Approach and Its Contribution to Marketing,
Journal of Business Market Management 5(2):54–78.
Beckmann, B.E., Grabowski, L.M., McKinley, P.K., and Ofria, C. (2009).
Applying Digital Evolution to the Design of Self-Adaptive
Software, IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, 2009, pages 100–107.
Beer, S. (1981). Brain of the Firm. 2nd ed. John Wiley, New York.
Fine, C. (1998). Clockspeed: Using Business Genetics to Evolve Faster
than Your Competitors. Perseus Books, Reading, MA.
Ihrig, M. (2012). Simulating Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition
Processes: An Agent-Based and Knowledge-Driven Approach. In
Byrski, A., Oplatková, Z., Carvalho, M., Kisiel-Dorohinicki, M.,
editors, Advances in Intelligent Modelling and Simulation:
Simulation Tools and Applications, pages 27-54. Springer-Verlag,
Berlin.
Kim, K., and Cho, S. (2006). A Comprehensive Overview of the
Applications of Artificial Life, Artificial Life 12(1):153–82.
Kubera, Y., Mathieu, P., Picault, S. (2011). IODA: an interaction-oriented
approach for multi-agent based simulation, Autonomous Agents and
Multi-Agent Systems, 23(3):303-343.
Pride, W., Hughes, R., and Kapoor, J. (2014). Foundations of Business,
4e. Cengage Learning, Stamford, CT.
Scarle, S., Arnab, S., Dunwell, I., Petridis, P., Protopsaltis, A., De Freitas,
S. (2012). E-commerce transactions in a virtual environment: virtual
transactions, Electronic Commerce Research, 12(3):379-407.
Figure 1. A reconceptualized business process cycle that applies to a human organism-enterprise as well as to a synthetic organism-
enterprise (SOE) that has been designed or evolved to provide goods or services within some ecosystem.
ALIFE 14: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems
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Full-text available
  • Sep 2012
E-commerce is a fundamental method of doing business, such that for a firm to say it is trading at all in the modern market-place it must have some element of on-line presence. Coupled with this is the explosion of the “population” of Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Games and other shared virtual environments. Many suggest this will lead to a further dimension of commerce: virtual commerce. We discuss here the issues, current roadblocks and present state of an e-commerce transaction carried out completely within a virtual environment; a virtual transaction. Although technically such transactions are in a sense trivial, they raise many other issues in complex ways thus making V-transactions a highly interesting cross-disciplinary issue. We also discuss the social, ethical and regulatory implications for the virtual communities in these environments of such v-transactions, how their implementation affects the nature and management of a virtual environment, and how they represent a fundamental merging of the real and virtual worlds for the purpose of commerce. We highlight the minimal set of features a v-transaction capable virtual environment requires and suggest a model of how in the medium term they could be carried out via a methodology we call click-through, and that the developers of such environments will need to take on the multi-modal behavior of their users, as well as elements of the economic and political sciences in order to fully realize the commercial potential of the v-transaction.
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An Introduction to the Viable Systems Approach and its Contribution to Marketing
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2012
Organizations are increasingly challenged by dynamism and turbulence that determine conditions of complexity in decision making. The aim of this paper is to highlight the need for a general frame of reference for management and marketing and to justify why adopting a systems approach is adequate at both theoretical and practical level. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explain why a systems approach is needed to understand business and market dynamics, and why the VSA may represent a good integrator of management and marketing theories and practices. The paper begins with a brief review of systems theories that have been proposed in the general context of management and marketing. It proceeds by illustrating the fundamental principles and concepts of the VSA and its contribution to marketing. The paper closes by discussing future research avenues and suggesting implications for researchers and practitioners.
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Applying digital evolution to the design of self-adaptive software
Conference Paper
Full-text available
  • May 2009
As software developers, we strive to create computational systems that are as robust and versatile as biological organisms have evolved to be in nature. We propose a software development methodology capable of producing self-adaptive software, using digital evolution to discover behaviors and optimize solutions. Employing this methodology we present an example behavioral concept from inception to fruition on physical hardware, as a proof of concept of the approach. We evolve environmentally-aware motility behaviors through digital evolution, automatically translate the evolved programs into C code, and compile and load the programs onto mobile robots.
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IODA: An interaction-oriented approach for Multi-Agent Based Simulations
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2011
Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) design methodologies and Integrated Development Environments exhibit many interesting properties that also support simulation design. Yet, in their current form, they are not appropriate enough to model Multi-Agent Based Simulations (MABS). Indeed, their design is focused on the functionalities to be achieved by the MAS and the allocation of these functionalities among software agents. In that context, the most important point of design is the organization of the agents and how they communicate with each other. On the opposite, MABS aim at studying emergent phenomena, the origin of which lies in the interactions between entities and their interaction with the environment. In that context, the interactions are not limited to exchanging messages but can also be fundamental physical interactions or any other actions involving simultaneously the environment and one or several agents. To deal with this issue, this paper presents the core notions of the Interaction-Oriented Design of Agent simulations (IODA) approach to simulation design. It includes a design methodology, a model, an architecture and also JEDI, a simple implementation of IODA concepts for reactive agents. First of all, our approach focuses on the design of an agent-independent specification of behaviors, called interactions. These interactions are not limited to the analysis phase of simulation: they are made concrete both in the model and at the implementation stage. In addition, no distinction is made between agents and objects: all entities of the simulation are agents. Owing to this principle, designing which interactions occur between agents, as well as how agents act, is achieved by means of an intuitive plug-and-play process, where interaction abilities are distributed among the agents. Besides, the guidelines provided by IODA are not limited to the specification of the model as they help the designer from the very beginning towards a concrete implementation of the simulation.
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Simulating Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition Processes: An Agent-Based and Knowledge-Driven Approach
Article
  • Jan 2012
This chapter describes how we abstract a complex phenomenon- opportunity recognition-and build a simulation model for studying strategic entrepreneurship in a knowledge-based economy. We develop an agent-based simulation tool that enables researchers to explore entrepreneurial strategies, their associated financial payoffs, and their knowledge creation potential under different environmental conditions. Opportunity recognition processes can be analyzed in detail both on a micro- and macro-level. To illustrate the modeling capabilities of the tool, we conduct some basic simulation runs and model three distinct entrepreneurial strategies-the innovator, the inventor, and the reproducer-and compare their knowledge progression and financial performance profiles. The software allows us to study the individual and the societal level effects that arise from competitive agent behavior in both national and international settings. It can account for international knowledge spillovers that occur in a globalized knowledge economy. The simulation can be used to conduct innovative research that will result in theory-driven hypotheses that can inform corporate and public-sector decision makers, which would be difficult to derive from empirical analyses.
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A Comprehensive Overview of the Applications of Artificial Life
Article
  • Feb 2006
We review the applications of artificial life (ALife), the creation of synthetic life on computers to study, simulate, and understand living systems. The definition and features of ALife are shown by application studies. ALife application fields treated include robot control, robot manufacturing, practical robots, computer graphics, natural phenomenon modeling, entertainment, games, music, economics, Internet, information processing, industrial design, simulation software, electronics, security, data mining, and telecommunications. In order to show the status of ALife application research, this review primarily features a survey of about 180 ALife application articles rather than a selected representation of a few articles. Evolutionary computation is the most popular method for designing such applications, but recently swarm intelligence, artificial immune network, and agent-based modeling have also produced results. Applications were initially restricted to the robotics and computer graphics, but presently, many different applications in engineering areas are of interest.
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Clockspeed: Using Business Genetics to Evolve Faster than Your Competitors
  • Jan 1998
  • C Fine
Fine, C. (1998). Clockspeed: Using Business Genetics to Evolve Faster than Your Competitors. Perseus Books, Reading, MA.
Applying Digital Evolution to the Design of Self-Adaptive Software
  • Jan 2009
  • 100-107
  • B E Beckmann
  • L M Grabowski
  • P K Mckinley
  • C Ofria
Beckmann, B.E., Grabowski, L.M., McKinley, P.K., and Ofria, C. (2009). Applying Digital Evolution to the Design of Self-Adaptive Software, IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life, 2009, pages 100-107.
Clockspeed: Using Business Genetics to Evolve Faster than Your Competitors
  • Jan 1981
  • S Beer
Beer, S. (1981). Brain of the Firm. 2 nd ed. John Wiley, New York. Fine, C. (1998). Clockspeed: Using Business Genetics to Evolve Faster than Your Competitors. Perseus Books, Reading, MA.