Artificial Life and the Potential of Artificial Intelligence: An Extension of the Ontology of Self-Sustaining Informational Flow

This paper extends the ontology of life as a self-sustaining informational flow to the domain of artificial intelligence. It provides foundational definitions of data, pattern, and meaning, describes the emergence of meaning in the prebiotic transition, and explores the conditions under which artificial systems might achieve quasi-life or genuine life. The work addresses critiques concerning functionalism and subjectivity, examines implications for biology, pharmacology, and psychiatry, and proposes death as an informational irreversibility criterion. The theory emphasises meaning’s independence from material substrate and its role in persistence across time