ARTIFICIAL LIFE
This is an emerging field that attempts to simulate the
behavior of living things in the realm of computers and
robotics. The field overlaps artificial intelligence (AI) since
intelligent behavior is an aspect of living things. The design
of a self-reproducing mechanism by John von Neumann in
the mid-1960s was the first model of artificial life. The field was expanded by the devel-
opment of cellular automata as typified in John Conway’s
Game of Life in the 1970s, which demonstrated how simple
components interacting according to a few specific rules
could generate complex emergent patterns. A program by
Craig Reynolds uses this principle to model the flocking
behavior of simulated birds, called “boids”.
The development of genetic algorithms by John Holland
added selection and evolution to the act of reproduction.
This approach typically involves the setting up of numerous
small programs with slightly varying code, and having them
attempt a task such as sorting data or recognizing patterns.
Those programs that prove most “fit” at accomplishing the
task are allowed to survive and reproduce.
In the act of
reproduction, biological mechanisms such as genetic muta-
tion and crossover are allowed to intervene
A rather similar approach is found in the
neural network, where those nodes that succeed better at
the task are given greater “weight” in creating a composite
solution to the problem.
A more challenging but interesting approach to AL is to
create actual robotic “organisms” that navigate in the physi-
cal rather than the virtual world. Roboticist Hans Moravec
of the Stanford AI Laboratory and other researchers have
built robots that can deal with unexpected obstacles by
improvisation, much as people do, thanks to layers of soft-
ware that process perceptions, fit them to a model of the
world, and make plans based on goals. But such robots,
built as full-blown designs, share few of the characteristics
of artificial life. As with AI, the bottom-up approach offers
a different strategy that has been called “fast, cheap, and
out of control”—the production of numerous small, simple,
insectlike robots that have only simple behaviors, but are
potentially capable of interacting in surprising ways.
If a meaningful genetic and reproductive mechanism can be
included in such robots, the result would be much closer to
true artificial life.
The philosophical implications arising from the pos-
sible development of true artificial life are similar to those
involved with “strong AI.” Human beings are used to view-
ing themselves as the pinnacle of a hierarchy of intelligence
and creativity. However, artificial life with the capability
of rapid evolution might quickly outstrip human capabili-
ties, perhaps leading to a world like that portrayed by sci-
ence fiction writer Gregory Benford, where flesh-and-blood
humans become a marginalized remnant population.
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