He became known in the 1990s for his research on the use of genetic algorithms to evolve artificial neural networks using three-dimensional cellular automata inside field programmable gate arrays.

This prediction has attracted debate and criticism from the AI research community, and some of its more notable members, such as Kevin Warwick, Bill Joy, Ken MacLeod, Ray Kurzweil, and Hans Moravec, have voiced their opinions on whether or not this future is likely.

Until his retirement in late 2010[2] he was a professor at Xiamen University, where he taught theoretical physics and computer science, and ran the Artificial Brain Lab.

During this 8-year span he and his fellow researchers published a series of papers in which they discussed the use of genetic algorithms to evolve neural structures inside 3D cellular automata.

The design was considerably simplified, and in 1997 the "collect and distribute 1 bit" ("CoDi-1Bit") model was published, and work began on a hardware implementation using Xilinx XC6264 FPGAs.

[5] The researchers evolved cellular automata for several tasks (using software simulation, not hardware):[5] Ultimately the project failed to produce a functional robot control system, and ATR terminated it along with the closure of ATR-HIP in February 2001.

[6] The original aim of de Garis' work was to establish the field of "brain building" (a term of his invention) and to "create a trillion dollar industry within 20 years".

In May 2006 he became a professor at Wuhan University's international school of software, teaching graduate level pure mathematics, theoretical physics and computer science.

[16][17] This scenario has been criticised by other AI researchers, including Chris Malcolm, who described it as "entertaining science fiction horror stories which happen to have caught the attention of the popular media".

[15]: back cover In 2005, de Garis published a book describing his views on this topic entitled The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines.

[15] Cosmism is a moral philosophy that favours building or growing strong artificial intelligence and ultimately leaving Earth to the Terrans, who oppose this path for humanity.

The first half of the book describes technologies which he believes will make it possible for computers to be billions or trillions of times more intelligent than humans.

Cosmists will foresee the massive, truly astronomical potential of substrate-independent cognition, and will therefore advocate unlimited growth in the designated fields, in the hopes that "super intelligent" machines might one day colonise the universe.

The factions, he predicts, may eventually war to the death because of this, as the Terrans will come to view the Cosmists as "arch-monsters" when they begin seriously discussing acceptable risks, and the probabilities of large percentages of Earth-based life going extinct.

In response to this, the Cosmists will come to view the Terrans as being reactionary extremists, and will stop treating them and their ideas seriously, further aggravating the situation, possibly beyond reconciliation.