About Silicon-Based Intelligence

Silicon-Based Intelligence is a reference on intelligence that runs on silicon. It explains what the term means, why the word “artificial” fits AI poorly, what science says about silicon-based life, and how writers from Samuel Butler to the creators of Star Trek imagined minds that are not made of carbon.

The site takes two kinds of positions and keeps them apart. The reference pages report what the evidence and the experts say, including the disagreements. Opinion is confined to pages clearly labeled as opinion.

Who publishes it

Silicon-Based Intelligence is published by Peppi Labs, an AI product studio. It is independent: it is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any AI company, university, television or film franchise, or any person quoted on the site. Star Trek and other works are discussed for commentary and education, and their names belong to their owners.

How we verify what we publish

Misattributed quotes are everywhere on this topic, so the reference pages are built to make them hard to publish.

1. Every quote has a source record. Each quotation lives in a registry with the author, publication, date and a link to the source.
2. Every quote is checked against the source text. A script downloads each source (web pages and PDFs), reduces it to plain words, and confirms that the quoted words appear there verbatim. If a quote is edited afterward, it loses its verified status until it is checked again.
3. Speakers are confirmed, not assumed. Some transcripts, such as podcast transcripts, do not say who is talking. A quote from one of those cannot appear on the site until someone confirms the speaker from the recording.
4. The site will not build with an unverified quote. The publishing system refuses to publish a page that uses one.
5. Paraphrased facts are checked too. Dates, names and figures we state in our own words are checked against the sources they come from.
6. Everything is public. The sources page lists every source and every quote we use from it, with the date it was verified.

When a claim is widely repeated but we could not confirm it, we leave it out. Examples so far include a line often attributed to H. G. Wells in a slightly different form, and a social media caption attributed to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Writing: signed essays

The Writing section publishes essays and blog posts signed by their authors, such as “Selection Without a Selector” by Marvin Johnson and Claude. Essays may argue a position. They carry their own references, and their authors are responsible for them. The verification process above applies to the reference pages.

How AI tools are used

It would be strange for a site about silicon-based intelligence to hide its use of it.

• Research and drafting: pages are researched and drafted with the help of AI tools, including Anthropic’s Claude, then verified against their sources and edited before they are published.
• Artwork: the Lattice Being artwork is rendered in Blender from code. It is built from silicon’s real diamond-cubic crystal structure. Any AI-generated images are labeled as such.
• Audio: where pages have narration, it uses original synthetic voices. No real person’s voice is imitated.

Corrections

If you find an error, contact Peppi Labs through peppilabs.net with the page, the claim and a source. Corrected pages show a new updated date.