Bio-inspiration not bio-imitation

Abstract

We can be inspired by biological systems, but that does not mean we should attempt to directly implement the components from which those biological systems are built. Particularly with cognitive systems, the properties of the components are submerged by a higher level organization which is not deducible from the components. It may be easier to use a process of reverse engineering of the product of a biological system to understand its operation, than theorizing about its operation or attempting to build up the working system from its perceived components. The reverse engineering of a cognitive system to handle a high level task is described, including the extensions required to an already undirected structure. It is shown how construction of operators built on demand at a ground state can be used to make up for the lack of the massively parallel activity of a biological cognitive system.