1. Artificial Life CS 575 Human Issues in Computing Spring 2008 Seyed Saeid Mousavi

2. What is life? Even the biologists (people who study life) have a tough time describing what life is!

3. What is life? (Cont.) After many years of studying living things, from the mold on your old tuna sandwich to monkeys in the rainforest, biologists have determined that all living things do share some things in common:

4. 1) Living things need to take in energy

5. 2) Living things get rid of waste

6. 3) Living things grow and develop

7. 4) Living things respond to their environment

8. 5) Living things reproduce and pass their traits onto their offspring

9. 6) Over time, living things evolve (change slowly) in response to their environment

10. ALIFE

11. What is Artificial Life?  Known as Artificial life/Alife/AL  Is a field of study and an associated art form  Examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations  Uses computer models, robotics, and biochemistry.

12. Another definition Artificial Life is devoted to a new discipline that investigates the scientific, engineering, philosophical, and social issues involved in our rapidly increasing technological ability to synthesize life-like behaviors from scratch in computers, machines, molecules, and other alternative media.

13. Types of ALIFE There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate biological phenomena. The term "artificial life" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife.

14. Do you know of any computer program which resembles a living organism?

15. ALife, what about it?  Categories of AL and example Program-based Module-based Parameter-based Neural net–based  Organizations

16. Program-based  Contain organisms with a complex DNA language.  This language is more often in the form of a computer program than actual biological DNA.  Assembly derivatives are the most common languages used.

17. Darwinbots  Is an open source, freeware artificial life simulator  Originally developed by Carlo Comis  Provides a virtual environment in which a number of digital organisms -called "bots" interact, fight for resources, and eventually reproduce and evolve http://digilander.libero.it/darwinbots/interface.html http://digilander.libero.it/darwinbots/interface.html

18. Module-based  Individual modules are added to a creature.  The modules modify the creature's behaviors and characteristics: Directly, by hard coding into the simulation (leg type A increases speed and metabolism) 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).  These are simulators which emphasize user creation and accessibility over mutation and evolution

19. TechnoSphere  TechnoSphere is a 3D model world inhabited by artificial lifeforms  created by WWW users.  There are thousands of creatures in the world all competing to survive.  They eat, fight, mate and create offspring which evolve and adapt to their environment.

20. TechnoSphere When you make a creature it will email you to let you know what it has been getting up to in its world. Using the creature tools you can find out how your creature is surviving, what it is doing at any time, and where it is in the terrain. http://www.technosphere.game-host.org/

23. Parameter-based  Organisms are generally constructed with pre- defined and fixed behaviors  The behaviors are controlled by various parameters that mutate  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

24. Gardens of Kyresoo  Kyresoo flowers grow from the division of individual cells  Each cell operates independently according to the instructions embedded in its genetic code.  Cell size, shape, color, interaction with neighboring cells and the environment, all are controlled by expressed proteins.  The resulting shape of the plant is purely an "emergent" property of the behavior of individual cells.

25. Neural net–based  Creatures learn and grow using neural nets or a close derivative  Emphasis is more on learning than on natural selection

26. Noble Ape  Features a number of autonomous simulation components including: landscape simulation biological simulation weather simulation sentient creature (Noble Ape) simulation  simple intelligent-agent scripting language (ApeScript). http://www.nobleape.com/ http://www.nobleape.com/

27. ALIFE Organizations

28. International Society for Artificial Life  ISAL was established in May of 2001 as a non-profit organization and currently is based at Reed College.  ISAL is a democratic, international, professional society dedicated to promoting scientific research and education relating to artificial life, including sponsoring conferences, publishing scientific journals and newsletters, and maintaining web sites related to artificial life. Artificial Life (published by MIT Press) is the official journal of ISAL, and the biannual International Conference on Artificial Life is the official scientific gathering of the Society. http://www.alife.org/ http://www.alife.org/

29. BIOTA  Biota.org promotes and assists the engineering of complete, biologically- inspired, synthetic ecosystems and organisms. This involves the creation and deployment of digital tools and environments for simulation, research, and learning about living systems both natural and artificial. These tools range from simple genetic algorithms to full multi- user virtual environments.  http://www.biota.org/about/ http://www.biota.org/about/

30. Future of ALife?! Artificial consciousnessArtificial lifeArtificial reality Augmented reality Artificial society Brain-in-a-vat Computational sociology Computational universe theory Consensus reality Cyberpunk Digital philosophy Dream argument Evil genius Fabric of Reality Holodeck Hyperreality Infosphere Lucid Dreaming Metaverse Mind Transfer Mixed reality The Matrix Tipler's "Omega point" Philosophy of information Reality Second Life Simulacrum Social simulation Theory of Knowledge Virtual Reality Virtual Worlds Zeno's paradoxes

31. Questions/Comments?!

32. References  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life  http://www.alife.org/ http://www.alife.org/  http://www.biota.org/about/ http://www.biota.org/about/  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechnoSphere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TechnoSphere  http://adam.ierymenko.name/nanopond.shtml http://adam.ierymenko.name/nanopond.shtml  http://www.nobleape.com/ http://www.nobleape.com/  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_life  http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/alife.html#Artificial_life http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/alife.html#Artificial_life  http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05052407.html http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/may/05052407.html