The Wetware Route to Explore Embodied Cognition: A Proposal

Embodied AI, the main direction of AI engaged in the synthetic modeling of natural cognition, is generally based on hardware- software approaches. Here we present the general lines of a proposal referred as the “wetware route” to Embodied AI, construed as the ideation and implementation of chemical models of cognitive processes inspired by the theory of autopoiesis. Our approach proposes to focus on the organizational traits that characterize autopoietic systems as cognitive systems, and accordingly attempts to define a viable organizational Embodied AI research program in the nascent wetware sci-tech arena of Synthetic Biology.