# Artificial Life > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Artificial Life / Biology / Computation **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Artificial life studies life-as-it-could-be by synthesizing or simulating life-like processes in software, hardware and physicochemical systems. ## Machine-Evolution Context Its strongest experiments do not merely imitate biological appearance; they isolate replication, heredity, ecology and evolution so that causal claims can be tested. Barricelli, Tierra, Avida and Evoloops form a central lineage. ## Research Modes - **Software:** cellular automata, digital organisms, artificial chemistries and virtual ecologies. - **Hardware:** robots and physical systems that adapt, construct or reproduce. - **Wetware:** synthetic or hybrid physicochemical systems exploring life-like organization. The field distinguishes simulation from synthesis. A weather simulation does not become wet, but a digital population can instantiate the abstract Darwinian relations of heredity, variation and selection inside its own computational environment. ## Historical Spine [[wiki/John von Neumann|Von Neumann]] specified self-reproduction formally. [[wiki/Nils Aall Barricelli|Barricelli]] ran evolving numerical populations. [[wiki/Christopher Langton|Langton]] helped define “life as it could be.” [[wiki/Evoloop|Evoloops]] added inherited structural variation to self-replicating loops. [[wiki/Tierra|Tierra]] and [[wiki/Avida|Avida]] created experimental computational ecologies. ## Unsolved Problem [[wiki/Open-Ended Evolution|Open-ended evolution]] remains the central frontier. Artificial systems can evolve real novelty and ecological interaction yet often settle into bounded regimes. The biosphere’s continuing construction of new niches and levels of organization has not been reproduced indefinitely. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary Being an artificial-life object does not automatically confer life, sentience or rights. Each claim needs its own operational and moral criteria. Designers also remain responsible for containment, resource use and ecological externalities even when the system’s specific strategies emerge without being programmed. ## Relationships [[wiki/Digital Organism|Digital Organism]], [[wiki/Artificial Ecology|Artificial Ecology]], [[wiki/Artificial Life Journal|Artificial Life Journal]], [[wiki/Open-Ended Evolution|Open-Ended Evolution]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "As our computing resources expand and become better connected, more niches will appear in which AIs can reproduce, compete and evolve." > **— Donald D. Hoffman**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/AI Will Reproduce Compete and Evolve by Donald D. Hoffman|AI Will Reproduce Compete and Evolve by Donald D. Hoffman]] > "For decades I've been an acolyte of Doug Engelbart, who believed that computers were machines for augmenting human intellect." > **— John Naughton**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Computers Were Built to Augment Human Intellect by John Naughton|Computers Were Built to Augment Human Intellect by John Naughton]] > "Machine thinking is not motivated by any innate drive to sustain a machine's life (though machine thinking probably serves to improve human life!)." > **— Roy Baumeister**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Risk Debate/Machine Thinking Has No Innate Will to Survive by Roy Baumeister|Machine Thinking Has No Innate Will to Survive by Roy Baumeister]] > "Our thinking machines will be smarter than we are, and the machines they make will be smarter still." > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Machines Will Build Smarter Machines by W. Daniel Hillis|Machines Will Build Smarter Machines by W. Daniel Hillis]] > "Eventually commonly available information processing technology will probably become so sophisticated that making thinking machines will not all that hard to do." > **— Gregory Paul**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Thinking Machines May Eventually Become Easy to Build by Gregory Paul|Thinking Machines May Eventually Become Easy to Build by Gregory Paul]] > ""That seems reasonable," I agreed. "My own personal theory is that extraterrestrial life could be here already... and how would we necessarily know? If there is life in the universe, the form of life that will prove to be most successful at propagating itself will be digital life; it will adopt a form that is independent of the local chemistry, and migrate from one place to another as an electromagnetic signal, as long as there's a digital world — a civilization that has discovered the Universal Turing Machine — for it to colonize when it gets there. And that's why von Neumann and you other Martians got us to build all these computers, to create a home for this kind of life."" > **— George Dyson**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/Digital Life May Travel Between the Stars by George Dyson|Digital Life May Travel Between the Stars by George Dyson]] > "As we invent and expand worlds of 1s and 0s the primary criteria for success and viral replication is whether we can breathe life into their virtual realities. Be this a direct reflection of daily life, a la Facebook, multi player massive worlds, or a replicating, self reinforcing network reproductive logic. The digital world accelerates expansion, survival, virtual life through mutant hyper growth. It becomes a fast forward caricature of what we have strived to build throughout centuries of breeding and agricultural practices, of building layer upon layer of civilizations in great cities." > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/Digital Worlds Accelerate the Evolution of Virtual Life by Juan Enriquez|Digital Worlds Accelerate the Evolution of Virtual Life by Juan Enriquez]] > “The earliest computing, in the first computer store in the world, Dick Heyser in Santa Monica, had me try something that I had read in SciAm by Martin Gardner: Conway's 'Game of Life'. The literal incarnation of the initial premise: Simplicity reduced to that YinYang: a cell is On or Off, black or white. But there is one more thing added here now: iteration. With just four rules each cell is said to live or die and in each cycle the pattern changes, iteratively. From dead dots on paper, and static pixels on phospor, it sprang to—life! Not only patterns, but blinkers, gliders, even glider guns, heck glider gun canons! Indeed, it is now seen as a true Turing-complete machine. Artificial Life. Needless to say: very deep.” > **— Kai Krause**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/Simple Rules Can Generate Artificial Life by Kai Krause|Simple Rules Can Generate Artificial Life by Kai Krause]] > “In other words, it was OK for wisdom to sometimes lag behind in the race, because it would catch up when needed. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and future strong artificial intelligence, however, learning from mistakes is not a desirable strategy: we want to develop our wisdom in advance so that we can get things right the first time, because that might be the only time we’ll have. In other words, we need to change our approach to tech risk from reactive to proactive. Wisdom needs to progress faster.” > **— Max Tegmark**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Technology Is Advancing Faster Than Wisdom by Max Tegmark|Technology Is Advancing Faster Than Wisdom by Max Tegmark]] > “The problem with all this is that we cannot excel our way out of modern problems. Within the same century, we have unlocked the twin nuclei of both cell and atom and created the conditions for synthetic biological and even digital life with computer programs that can spawn with both descent and variation on which selection can now act. We are in genuinely novel territory which we have little reason to think we can control; only the excellent would compare these recent achievements to harmless variations on the invention of the compass or steam engine. So surviving our newfound god-like powers will require modes that lie well outside expertise, excellence, and mastery.” > **— Eric R. Weinstein**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT *SHOULD* WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?”* [[reminders/Existential Risk/Synthetic Biological and Digital Life Put Humanity in Genuinely Novel Territory by Eric R. Weinstein|Synthetic Biological and Digital Life Put Humanity in Genuinely Novel Territory by Eric R. Weinstein]] > “First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then the Net becomes a constant while your home is a place you go.” > **— Bruce Sterling**, *2004, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT'S YOUR LAW?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/The Net May Become the Constant While Home Becomes the Place You Go by Bruce Sterling|The Net May Become the Constant While Home Becomes the Place You Go by Bruce Sterling]] > “As evidence that we really do not understand what it takes for something to be alive, we have not been able to build machines that are alive.” > **— Rodney A. Brooks**, *2001, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT QUESTIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/We Cannot Build Life Because We Cannot Define It by Rodney A. Brooks|We Cannot Build Life Because We Cannot Define It by Rodney A. Brooks]] > “Is there a Turing test for living rather than thinking that can distinguish animate from automata?” > **— Neil Gershenfeld**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Digital Life/Is There a Turing Test for Living Rather Than Thinking by Neil Gershenfeld|Is There a Turing Test for Living Rather Than Thinking by Neil Gershenfeld]] ## Sources / Provenance - MIT Press, _Artificial Life_ journal description; Christopher Langton, _Artificial Life_ proceedings.