Related papers: Open-Ended Artificial Evolution
Recently, Adami and coworkers have been able to measure the information content of digital organisms living in their {\em Avida} artificial life system. They show that over time, the organisms behave like Maxwell's demon, accreting…
Roboticists are trying to replicate animal behavior in artificial systems. Yet, quantitative bounds on capacity of a moving platform (natural or artificial) to express information in the environment are not known. This paper presents a…
Mixed microbial communities, usually composed of various bacterial and fungal species, are fundamental in a plethora of environments, from soil to human gut and skin. Their evolution is a paradigmatic example of intertwined dynamics, where…
According to the "hard-steps" model, the origin of humanity required "successful passage through a number of intermediate steps" (so-called "hard" or "critical" steps) that were intrinsically improbable with respect to the total time…
In analogon to successful artificial evolution simulations as Tierra or avida, this text presents a way to perform artificial evolution in a native x86 system. The implementation of the artificial chemistry and first results of statistical…
We propose an approach of open-ended evolution via the simulation of swarm dynamics. In nature, swarms possess remarkable properties, which allow many organisms, from swarming bacteria to ants and flocking birds, to form higher-order…
Evolutionary computation offers a variety of tools to solve complex real-world optimization problems. However, research often focuses on smaller, simplified problems and optimization algorithms that sometimes miss expectations in real-world…
Since the time of Darwin, scientists have struggled to reconcile the evolution of biological forms in a universe determined by fixed laws. These laws underpin the origin of life, evolution, human culture and technology, as set by the…
Continuing generation of novelty, complexity, and adaptation are well-established as core aspects of open-ended evolution. However, it has yet to be firmly established to what extent these phenomena are coupled and by what means they…
The role of historical contingency in the origin of life is one of the great unknowns in modern science. Only one example of life exists--one that proceeded from a single self-replicating organism (or a set of replicating hyper-cycles) to…
A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…
Can we quantify the change of complexity throughout evolutionary processes? We attempt to address this question through an empirical approach. In very general terms, we simulate two simple organisms on a computer that compete over limited…
In recent years there has been a tremendous surge in the general capabilities of AI systems, mainly fuelled by training foundation models on internetscale data. Nevertheless, the creation of openended, ever self-improving AI remains…
This study aims to extend the framework for assessing artificial intelligence, called GROW-AI (Growth and Realization of Autonomous Wisdom), designed to answer the question "Can machines grow up?" -- a natural successor to the Turing Test.…
Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs,…
Our understanding of the evolutionary process has gone a long way since the publication, 150 years ago, of "On the origin of species" by Charles R. Darwin. The XXth Century witnessed great efforts to embrace replication, mutation, and…
This research project investigates Lenia, an artificial life platform that simulates ecosystems of digital creatures. Lenia's ecosystem consists of simple, artificial organisms that can move, consume, grow, and reproduce. The platform is…
A place to live is one of the most crucial necessities for all living organisms since the advent of life on planet Earth. The nature of homes has changed considerably over time. At the very early stages, human begins lived in natural places…
One of the longest standing open problems in science is how life arises from non-living matter. If it is possible to measure this transition in the lab, then it might be possible to understand the physical mechanisms by which the emergence…
Machine learning has achieved remarkable success in many applications. However, existing studies are largely based on the closed-world assumption, which assumes that the environment is stationary, and the model is fixed once deployed. In…