Artificial life (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. System (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek systēma is a set of interacting or interdependent Entities, real or abstract Simulation is the imitation of some real thing state of affairs or process A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a Computer program, or network of computers that attempts to simulate an See also Robot Robotics is the science and technology of Robots and their design manufacture and application Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes in living Organisms It deals with the Structure and function of cellular components such as [1] There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Hardware is a general term that refers to the physical artifacts of a Technology. Wet alife is Artificial life created In vitro as opposed to the normally implied In silico when using the broader term alife. [2] Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate biological phenomena. Foundations of modern biology There are five unifying principles [3] The term "artificial life" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife.
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Overview
Artificial life studies the logic of living systems in artificial environments. Valentino Braitenberg (1926 Bolzano) is a German neuro-scientist and cyberneticist. breve is a free GPL software package that makes it easy to build 3D simulations of Decentralized systems and Artificial life. Living systems theory is a General theory about the existence of all living Systems their Structure, Interaction, Behavior and The goal is to study the phenomena of living systems in order to come to an understanding of the complex information processing that defines such systems.
Also sometimes included in the umbrella term Artificial Life are agent based systems which are used to study the emergent properties of societies of agents. An agent-based model (ABM is a Computational model for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous individuals in a network with a view to assessing their
Philosophy
At present, the commonly accepted definition of life does not consider any current alife simulations to be truly alive. However, different opinions about artificial life's potential have arisen:
- The strong alife (cf. Strong AI) position states that "life is a process which can be abstracted away from any particular medium" (John von Neumann). ethics of artificial intelligence The philosophy of artificial intelligence considers the relationship between machines and thought and attempts to answer such Notably, Tom Ray declared that his program Tierra is not simulating life in a computer but synthesizing it. Thomas S Ray (also known as Tom Ray) is an Ecologist who created and developed the Tierra project a Computer simulation of Artificial Tierra is a Computer simulation developed by Ecologist Thomas S
- The weak alife position denies the possibility of generating a "living process" outside of a chemical solution. Its researchers try instead to simulate life processes to understand the underlying mechanics of biological phenomena.
Organizations
Techniques
- Cellular automata were used in the early days of artificial life, and they are still often used for ease of scalability and parallelization. International Society of Artificial Life ISAL is a "democratic international professional society dedicated to promoting scientific research and education relating to A cellular automaton (plural cellular automata) is a discrete model studied in computability theory, Mathematics, Theoretical biology Alife and cellular automata share a closely tied history.
- Neural networks are sometimes used to model the brain of an agent. Traditionally the term neural network had been used to refer to a network or circuit of biological neurons. Although traditionally more of an artificial intelligence technique, neural nets can be important for simulating population dynamics of higher organisms that can learn. The symbiosis between learning and evolution is central to theories about the development of instincts in higher organisms, as in, for instance, the Baldwin effect. The Baldwin effect, also known as Baldwinian evolution or ontogenic evolution, is an early evolutionary Theory put forward in 1896 in a paper "A New
Related subjects
- Artificial intelligence has traditionally used a top down approach, while alife generally works from the bottom up.
- Artificial chemistry started as a method within the alife community to abstract the processes of chemical reactions. An artificial chemistry is a Computer model used to simulate various types of Systems Artificial chemistry is in some ways similar to a chemical reaction hence the
- Evolutionary algorithms applied to optimization problems are strongly related to weak alife, yet are sometimes dismissed as "not real artificial life". In Artificial intelligence, an evolutionary algorithm (EA is a Subset of Evolutionary computation, a generic population-based Metaheuristic Many optimization algorithms have been crafted which borrow from or closely mirror alife techniques. The primary difference lies in explicitly defining the fitness of an agent by its ability to solve a problem, instead of its ability to find food, reproduce, or avoid death. The following is a list of evolutionary algorithms closely related to and used in alife:
- Evolutionary art uses techniques and methods from artificial life to create new forms of art. The ant colony optimization Algorithm (ACO introduced by Marco Dorigo in 1992 in his PhD thesis is a probabilistic technique for solving computational In Artificial intelligence, an evolutionary algorithm (EA is a Subset of Evolutionary computation, a generic population-based Metaheuristic A genetic algorithm (GA is a Search technique used in Computing to find exact or Approximate solutions to optimization and Search In Artificial intelligence, genetic programming (GP is an Evolutionary algorithm based methodology inspired by Biological evolution to find Swarm intelligence (SI is Artificial intelligence based on the Collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems Evolutionary Art exploits the process of evolution to create an artwork which continually changes according to an Evolutionary algorithm.
- Evolutionary music uses similar techniques, but applied to music instead of visual art. Evolutionary music is the audio counterpart to Evolutionary art, whereby Algorithmic music is created using an Evolutionary algorithm.
History
Criticism
Alife has had a controversial history. The idea of human artifacts being given life has fascinated mankind for as long as men have been recording their myths and stories John Maynard Smith criticized certain artificial life work in 1994 as "fact-free science". Maynard Smith redirects here -- for other uses see Maynard Smith (disambiguation Professor John Maynard Smith, F Year 1994 ( MCMXCIV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1994 Gregorian calendar) [4] However, the recent publication of artificial life articles in widely read journals such as Science and Nature is evidence that artificial life techniques are becoming more accepted in the mainstream, at least as a method of studying evolution. Science is the Academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious Scientific Nature is a prominent Scientific journal, first published on 4 November 1869 eVolution is the third Album by eLDee, it was due to be released in 2008 [5]
Notable simulators
This is a list of Artificial life/Digital organism simulators, organized by the method of creature definition. A digital organism is a self-replicating Computer program that mutates and evolves.
Program-based
These contain organisms with a complex DNA language, usually Turing complete. In computability theory, several closely-related terms are used to describe the "computational power" of a computational system (such as an Abstract machine or This language is more often in the form of a computer program than actual biological DNA. Assembly derivatives are the most common languages used. Use of cellular automata is common but not required. A cellular automaton (plural cellular automata) is a discrete model studied in computability theory, Mathematics, Theoretical biology
- Avida
- breve (actually a multi-purpose simulation environment)
- Darwinbots
- Evolve 4.0
- Framsticks
- Tierra
- Nanopond
Module-based
Individual modules are added to a creature. Avida is an Artificial life software platform to study the Evolutionary biology of self-replicating and evolving computer programs ( Digital organisms. breve is a free GPL software package that makes it easy to build 3D simulations of Decentralized systems and Artificial life. DarwinBots is an open source Artificial life simulator originally developed by Carlo Comis providing a virtual environment in which a number of Evolve 40 is an open source freeware Artificial life simulator by Ken Stauffer Framsticks is a 3D freeware Artificial Life simulator Organisms consisting of physical structures ("bodies" and control structures ("brains" evolve Tierra is a Computer simulation developed by Ecologist Thomas S These modules modify the creature's behaviors and characteristics either directly, by hard coding into the simulation (leg type A increases speed and metabolism), or indirectly, through the emergent interactions between a creature's modules (leg type A moves up and down with a frequency of X, which interacts with other legs to create motion). Generally these are simulators which emphasize user creation and accessibility over mutation and evolution.
Parameter-based
Organisms are generally constructed with pre-defined and fixed behaviors that are controlled by various parameters that mutate. TechnoSphere was an online digital environment launched on September 1 1995 and hosted on a computer at a UK university That is, each organism contains a collection of numbers or other finite parameters. Each parameter controls one or several aspects of an organism in a well-defined way.
- Jeffrey Ventrella's programs Darwin Pond and Gene Pool.
- "Cell-based" - Parameters control the expression of "genes" or "proteins" which can themselves interact in complex ways. The resulting organism's properties are largely emergent but are still encoded in the genome with a finite number of parameters.
Neural net–based
These simulations have creatures that learn and grow using neural nets or a close derivative. Emphasis is often, although not always, more on learning than on natural selection.
See also
See also
- Autonomous foraging
- Artificial life organizations
- Complex adaptive system
- Social simulation
- Synthetic life
- Mathematical biology
References
- ^ Dictionary.com definition. Noble Ape is an Artificial life development project launched in June 1996 by Tom Barbalet. Polyworld is a cross-platform ( Linux, Mac OS X) program written by Larry Yaeger to evolve Artificial Intelligence through Natural selection Life simulation games (or Artificial life games are Simulation games in which the player lives or controls one or more artificial lifeforms Autonomous robots are Robots which can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance International Society of Artificial Life ISAL is a "democratic international professional society dedicated to promoting scientific research and education relating to Complex adaptive systems are special cases of Complex systems They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive Social simulation is the modeling or Simulation, normally performed using a computer, of social phenomena (e Synthetic life and artificial life (not to be confused with the field of Artificial Life) are terms used for attempts to recreate life from non-alive ( Abiotic For use of basic artimethics in Biology see relevant topic such as Serial dilution. Retrieved on 2007-01-19. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1419 - Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.
- ^ Mark A. Bedau (November 2003). Artificial life: organization, adaptation and complexity from the bottom up. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences. Retrieved on 2007-01-19. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1419 - Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.
- ^ Christopher Langton. What is Artificial Life?. Retrieved on 2007-01-19. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1419 - Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.
- ^ Horgan, J. 1995. From Complexity to Perplexity. Scientific American. p107
- ^ Evolution experiments with digital organisms. Retrieved on 2007-01-19. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1419 - Hundred Years' War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.
External links
- Artificial Life (journal)
- Biota Interview with Jay Lemmon on this Wikipedia entry
- 9th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2007)
- 11th International Conference on Artificial Life (ALFE XI) and associated Wiki
- Freenode #alife IRC chat room
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