Hofstadter has said (Godel, Escher, Bach... Basic Books,   
   1979) that "below every tangled hierarchy lies an   
   inviolate level." But is this true? Over the past few years   
   I have been developing my Asa (Autonomous Software   
   Agent) AIs. At first Asa was a pair of neural networks   
   (Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci., vol. 100, pg 85, 1997), later   
   I modified it to employ case based reasoners (Trans.   
   Kansas Acad. Sci., vol. 107, pg 32, 2004) and most   
   recently a hierarchical structure (Trans. Kansas Acad.   
   Sci., vol. 109, pg 159, 2006). The programming language   
   was also changed along the way and I no longer run Asa   
   on the original hardware.   
      
   Now you may not know this but I am a flesh and blood   
   living and breathing human being.  But just suppose that   
   I too was an AI, running and modifing Asa. Couldn't two   
   intelligent agents run and modify one another?  And   
   modify whatever they wanted, backing up if and when   
   their modifications caused a systems crash.   
      
   Now perhaps the laws of physics could be held to be   
   the "inviolate level" but I don't think that is what Hofstadter   
   had in mind.  And I suppose we shouldn't let the agents'   
   value system be too easily self-adjusted (Trans. Kansas   
   Acad. Sci., vol. 107, pg 32, 2004) either.  But values   
   can change if not too easily and too quickly.   
      
   So is there really an "inviolate level?"   
      
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