Artificial Intellegence - Which came first the CPU or you?

I use to work with a guy who spent his entire adult life working on Artificial Intelligence. 

He was publishing papers and theorizing in ways that others couldn't keep up - where others would get bogged down on smart automation and simple machine learning this guy was bent on understanding the true meaning of what makes something intelligent; he saw this as an essential component to creating his own.

After a couple of years I realised he started to go some what nuts, either that or he reached a point where he could see something I could not. Studying all forms of life and examining the patterns which form within the living, he became fascinated with the patterns he could see; many simple life forms following simular growth patterns to his own early attempts to create intelligence. He believed the coincidence too great, so he tried to theorize and define life it self vs. what we would think of intelligence.

He realised the key to unlocking true AI is to understand how things grow, vs. how something gets smart.

To achieve his goal he studied, all forms of technology,  philosophy,  many forms of religions, earning himself the title of Professor in Computer science along with multiple degree's in anything that related to his quest.

I have lost contact with him now, the last email he was spending a year in Tibet with some monks and trying to learn their views on the meaning life  - I wish him well..

One message he left me with, was one of contemplation; which came first computers or the humans who created them.

One things for sure 'learning' enables intelligence, whether we know something subconsciously or consciously at some point it was learned through action and we act in relation to our environment.

Lets consider for a moment that a computer did create us, then that would make the earth and our environment the Operating System in which we exist. 

If for a moment you could allow yourself the idea this could be true,

What kind of program are you?

All the best