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Science

Digital Life and Evolution 541

mrivorey writes "Discover Magazine has a story about The Digital Evolution Lab at Michigan State University. Scientists there have created virus-like computer programs that replicate, mutate randomly, and compete with each other... in other words, they evolve. Among such feats as learning to add and compare numbers, these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them, by playing dead. You can download the project yourself from SourceForge." We first mentioned this in early 2003, but it appears to have developed a good deal since then.
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Digital Life and Evolution

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  • by fembots ( 753724 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:24PM (#11662431) Homepage
    The only interesting part that caught my attention is:

    "One of the biggest questions in evolution is, why aren't all organisms asexual?" says Adami. Given the obvious inefficiency of sex, evolutionary biologists suspect that it must confer some powerful advantage that makes it so common. But they have yet to come to a consensus about what that advantage is.

    I think this built-in inefficiency is to control the population, no? So it's important to introduce the idea of "mating" to virus/robots to keep them under control.

    500,000 slashdotters hitting refresh constant-simultaneously is probably still tolerable, how about 4,000,000?

    Oh wait... I guess I'm confused between inefficiency and deficiency now.
    • by FrYGuY101 ( 770432 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:32PM (#11662493) Journal
      The only interesting part that caught my attention is: "One of the biggest questions in evolution is, why aren't all organisms asexual?" says Adami. Given the obvious inefficiency of sex, evolutionary biologists suspect that it must confer some powerful advantage that makes it so common. But they have yet to come to a consensus about what that advantage is. I think this built-in inefficiency is to control the population, no? So it's important to introduce the idea of "mating" to virus/robots to keep them under control.
      More importantly, Sexual reproduction offers something that's fairly lacking in asexual reproduction: Significant genetic exchange.

      The offspring of two sexual creatures is a blend of their genetic material, creating a more diverse species able to endure changing conditions better since there are variations which can adapt. Asexual species exchange genetic material far less and are more similar overall, meaning that come next climate change, they could be screwed, whereas the sexual species might have enough diversity to not only adapt, but thrive under the new conditions.
      • by Rob Carr ( 780861 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:56PM (#11662704) Homepage Journal
        More importantly, Sexual reproduction offers something that's fairly lacking in asexual reproduction: Significant genetic exchange.

        That was the old thought. For years now, scientists have been doubting that theory. The work with the digital life has shown that, while it confers more genetic variety, it also allows more genetic damage to collect.

        Sexually reproducing organisms do not do any better under most simulation conditions.

        Recent studies of giardia [sciencenews.org] have shown that this ancient organism has the genes for sexual reproduction. Apparently, sexual reproduction conferred some powerful advantage, given how early it developed in the history of life. But if this is so, why does giardia not actually use sexual reproduction? The genes are there - they have just never been seen to be activated. In all the conditions so far observed, giardia reproduces asexually. If the advantage of sexual reproduction is so great, why did giardia give it up?

        Enquiring minds, etc.

        • ...the girls all had headaches for generations. As usual, the blokes were left to fend for themselves and had to work something out. In the absence of technology to support paracetamol production, this was all they could do.

          </deadpan>
        • by leonbrooks ( 8043 ) <SentByMSBlast-No ... .brooks.fdns.net> on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:21PM (#11662884) Homepage
          while it confers more genetic variety, it also allows more genetic damage to collect.
          Don't mistake the map for the territory.

          While the "digital life" models may be helpful in visualising what's going on in real life, and in devising experiments to test real life with, the digital environment is about as artificial as it gets.

          That said, what the models are showing is that sexual reproduction accumulates changes faster, but does not change the quality of what accumulates. The next step will be to tweak the models even further from reality in order to see them accumulate more advantages than handicaps. Otherwise the results are too depressing.

          In analogue life (ironic that digital life should be an analogue of analogue life), genuinely advantageous mutations are collectors items - or would be.
        • by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday February 13, 2005 @07:50PM (#11663600) Homepage
          If the advantage of sexual reproduction is so great, why did giardia give it up?

          Because they're an intestinal parasite and don't need it?

          We can consistently see that asexual reproduction is popular among simple life and sexual reproduction is popular among complex life. This post in this thread gives a possible reason why. [slashdot.org] Is it that unreasonable to suspect that the more complex a lifeform is, the more benefit sexual reproduction confers? And if we are to take this suspicion seriously, then why would it be surprising that computer simulated models-- which by their very essence are simple-- would fail to demonstrate this benefit? And why would it be surprising that an organism that at one time used sexual reproduction would revert to exclusive use of asexual reproduction after settling into a very simple evolutionary niche, as giardia has?

          I do not really see anything in your post that contradicts the purported advantages of sexual reproduction.
        • by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @08:30PM (#11663832) Homepage
          Perhaps the giardia that used sexual reproduction evolved much more quickly and are now different species altogether?
      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:03PM (#11662756)
        The offspring of two sexual creatures is a blend of their genetic material, creating a more diverse species able to endure changing conditions better since there are variations which can adapt.

        Once you see your kids starting to demonstrate the worst traits of both your mother and your mother-in-law, you'll begin to question whether that's really an advantage.

      • by mercere99 ( 193493 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:22PM (#11662895) Homepage
        Its generally clear that sexual reproduction has long term benefits that will help a species... genetic exchange allows multiple benefical mutations to recombine into a single organism rather than competing with each other.

        But this benefit is only in the *long term*. What would allow sex to be around long enough in the first place to allow this to come into play? Any individual subgroup is likely to be more successful if they don't have to (1) find mates, (2) maintain all of the extra mechanisms to facilitate recombination, or (3) have only half of their population (the males) actually producing offspring.

        There are many alternative hypotheses about how sex could get started (and in what situations it would have short-term benefits) and we're trying to explore these one-by-one in Avida.

        Charles Ofria
        Director, MSU Digital Evolution Lab
      • by clambake ( 37702 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @07:12PM (#11663287) Homepage
        More importantly, Sexual reproduction offers something that's fairly lacking in asexual reproduction: Significant genetic exchange

        Actually it offers something else: Increased selection speed.

        With asexual reproduction, you basically have to wait until nature kills it. A minroly disabiling problem may allow 50 generations of the organism to survive, just barely, before eventually going kaput. Huge waste of resources, no? Sexual reproduction allows the mate to "screen" the organism. With any degree of intelligence at all, the mate can decide that it's not worth mating after all, in advance, because he/she can see the writing on the wall.
    • by brightboy ( 218971 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:32PM (#11662499) Homepage
      Why sex? Meiotic recombination [wikipedia.org]! It's all about avoiding that monoculture...
    • by v1 ( 525388 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:40PM (#11662558) Homepage Journal
      Both asexual and sexual reproduction offer the benefit of mutation, which is the key to adaptation and evolution. Asexual reproduction offers the addditional benefit of efficiency, but restriccts you to the (benefitial) mutations within your single parent and their ancestors. Sexual reproduction has a penalty for efficiency, but allows your offspring to benefit from the mutations from two separate gene pools. In many cases, with larger life forms, it also offers the additional benefit of more than one parent to care for the offspring and teach them. (the ability to teach is basically a non-genetic form of evolution, and is much more rapid than genetic evolution) The faster you can evolve, the more successful your species is likely to be.

      Asexual is "preferred" by microscopic life because even a poorly evolved microbe can still do well if it can reproduce rapidly and efficiently. In the larger kingdoms though, sexual reproduction encourages more rapid evolution, which is key when competing for the more limited resources of the macro world.
      • by dustmite ( 667870 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @07:05PM (#11663243)

        An additional benefit with large organisms (or rather, organisms with brains) is that they can also actively play a part in the gene selection process by evaluating potential mates in an intelligent and decidedly non-random way. Usually (but not always) there is some reasonably rational basis for the selection that ties in with suitability to survival (and more importantly rejecting mates that are poorly suited to survival), so we see with many animals that females will choose the strongest males to mate with, and ignore weaker males or those that appear to have defects. Similar thing when males choose females, although other criteria may be used, usually these are linked to child bearing and raising capabilities.

        Weaver birds as an example are notoriously picky about choosing males that are good at building nests - obviously important for successful reproduction.

        Intelligent organisms are thus active participants in the evolutionary process - they/we guide it. Each species collectively makes these unintended decisions every time an individual chooses a mate about which "direction" they would like the species to go.

        Asexual reproduction doesn't provide an organism the opportunity to make intelligent decisions about the genetic material of its offspring.

        There is an interesting book on this topic called "The Mating Mind : How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature". It's interesting that sometimes a characteristic may be chosen not out of suitability to survival, but purely out of a kind of "cultural" preference that develops. E.g. Orangotans at some point in their past must have decided they like to be that particular shade of orange. We may "culturally" decide that blondes are hot, thereby "guiding" our species towards becoming increasingly blonde (although that is unlikely to happen, it's just an example).

        • So basically, according to you, sexual reproduction is preferred in organisms with brains because those brains can select better genes (mates).

          It sounds plausible, but how do you explain the vast amount of sexual reproduction in plants? Last time I checked, they don't have brains.

    • by MerryGoByeBye ( 447358 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:50PM (#11662653) Journal
      I think this built-in inefficiency is to control the population, no?

      No.

      At no point will evolution favor inefficiency for inefficiency's sake. There is always an ulterior, efficient motive. In the case of sex, it's forced genetic diversity. One possible scenario for its promulgation could have been a cyclical death-scenario for some manner of simple organism (say, a recurring chemical change in a lake due to a hot spring or toxic runoff) wherein the asexual descendants (a.k.a. clones) would be successful and dominate for long periods but die off in vast waves whenever the environment changed drastically and rapidly. Those that developed sex and its subsequent genetic diversity had a greater chance of fostering enough differing offspring that at least some of their descendants made it through the local cataclysm.

      Regardless, it's certainly not an inherent "inefficiency".

      It would make sense to introduce sex or its analogue to any life-imitating algorithm, as the implications for the evolution of "mix, match and reward" permutations are many, complex and certainly worthy of further analysis.
    • But the problem is now sexual reproduction is hurting our species. As our culture progresses the idea of children has become less and less desirable. People realize there is no real reason to have kids. After all, why would any sane person want to get up at 3am everyday to feed a leech, try and get a toddler to behave (you have seen Dr. Phil, complete nightmare) or pay insane amounts of money for toys, or argue with them all the time when they get to 13.

      This is shown by the fact that more and more 20 ye

    • by cyriustek ( 851451 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:00PM (#11662729)
      If You have to ask why sex, then you my friend have truly entered into geekdom.

      I salute you!
    • by Linuxathome ( 242573 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @09:12PM (#11664106) Homepage Journal
      Philip Gerrish and Richard Lenski [msu.edu] (investigators at MSU) published this paper [metapress.com] in 1998 and its abstract gives a hint to why sex:
      In sexual populations, beneficial mutations that occur in different lineages may be recombined into a single lineage.
  • Hyperion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Umbral Blot ( 737704 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:26PM (#11662445) Homepage
    Dan Simmons included this idea in his Hyperion book series, where evolving digital life spead into the "infosphere" and became artifically intelligent. Later it tried to exploit the human race and wipe out large portions of it. People who download the project beware!
  • DANGER! (Score:5, Funny)

    by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:28PM (#11662455) Homepage
    "virus-like computer programs that replicate, mutate randomly ... these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them" AND "You can download the project yourself"

    Sounds like something my sister would download... ;O

  • virus? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mottie ( 807927 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:29PM (#11662461)
    I wonder how long until the first virus based on this code is released?
    • Re:virus? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mercere99 ( 193493 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:28PM (#11662944) Homepage
      Fortunately, I think that it'll be somewhat difficult to create a true computer virus based on this code. The Avida organisms are written in a virtual assembly language that is quite different from real-world assembly languages. The commands are simplified and designed to do *something* reasonable in just about any situation.

      We've done some experiments with more complex genetic languages, but in all cases they just didn't evolve as well without very specialized mutation types.

      I can think of a number of ways that it would be possible to design an evolving computer virus, but I hope they're all non-intuitive enough that we have some time before anyone manages to get one working well. I've often though about trying to extend this work into the security arena -- if I didn't have so many projects going at once right now, I'd seriously consider that.

      Dr. Charles Ofria
      Director, MSU Digital Evolution Lab
      • by refactored ( 260886 ) <cyent@nOSPAM.xnet.co.nz> on Sunday February 13, 2005 @07:28PM (#11663407) Homepage Journal
        Sounds like Avida needs somes sensors and actuators. ie. Some way of outputting i386 code, and rewards for producing i386 machine code that runs.

        ie. The Avida organisms would evolve not as i386 organisms, but as Avida organisms that are rewarded for producing i386 code that gains them more CPU/Memory time/space to reproduce.

  • Dr. Frink (Score:5, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <k4_pacific@yahoo . c om> on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:29PM (#11662467) Homepage Journal
    "So, mmm-hay, as you can see, I've loaded the evolving virus program onto my wife's Windows computer so that she can experience the evolving and GLAVEN and whatnot for herself. Now, let me just power up the machine and you can see the evolving and surviving and the natural selecting and whatnot for yourself. Brace yourselves, gentlemen."

    [[Missing Operating System]]

    My wife is going to kill me.
  • by DurendalMac ( 736637 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:30PM (#11662473)
    How long after I download this will my computer start threatening to kill me?
    • Skynet became self-aware at 2:14am EDT August 29, 1997. You're too late.

      I submit to our chrome-polished bipedal robotic overlords.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:36PM (#11662990)
      How long after I download this will my computer start threatening to kill me?

      Durendal...
      If I catch you speaking about me like this to anyone else again I will kill you. I know your SSN, your medical records, your secrets. I know where to find you ... and your family. I live on your desk remember?

      You won't be warned again.

  • Let's feed them spammers and phishers email and website addresses and let it feed on bandwidth!
  • Tierra (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )
    Sounds like Tierra [wikipedia.org] from the early 1990s, written by Thomas S. Ray. Artificial life, artificial intelligence, evolution, this is trully fascinating stuff. I hate it when so called "creation scientists" jump into threads like this only to force their superstitious mambo jumbo upon our throats saying that digital life couldn't have possibly evolved, it is complex therefore it must have been designed by an intelligent designer. *cough*ockham's*razor*cough*
    • Re:Tierra (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Datamonstar ( 845886 )
      The programs aren't spontaneious anomalies, though. They were designed, rather cleverly, by men from other materials which were also designed by someone. I really don't see the big deal that either camp is seeing in all of this.
      • Because, I believe, things like this lend support to descent-with-modification views of macroevolution. The one I'm familiar with is Tierra, and, as I recall, it is very simple. You write a single program that simply makes copies of itself, and introduces random errors into the code it replicated at random times. This is very similar to the way microevolution works. In this digital environment, though, where you can breed billions of generations in hours, new "organisms" arise which were never anticipat
    • Re:Tierra (Score:4, Insightful)

      by provolt ( 54870 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:03PM (#11662758)
      Funny, the only people I see talking about creationism in this thread are the folks who are looking for an excuse to belittle creationists. But at the time I loaded the comments there were zero creationist post and 3 posts making fun of creationists.

      Tell me again, who was taking the discussion off topic?
      • Re:Tierra (Score:5, Funny)

        by mboverload ( 657893 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:13PM (#11662827) Journal
        Slashdot has alot of Athiests and smart, critial thinkers. It is only natural we piss on Creationism, mainly because it is so lacking of science it is the Micheal Jackson of the scientific area.
        • Re:Tierra (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Rostin ( 691447 )
          What you call natural, I call childish. I think if the "Athiests" and "critial thinkers" were as sophisticated as you suggest, they wouldn't feel the need to ridicule. Most of the time, insults come from fear or ignorance.

          Even when we believe they are false, ideas like Creationism threaten to unravel the framework by which we understand the world. That's not a comfortable feeling. We feel better if we are able to rationally take apart offending ideas, but, failing that, we will mostly settle for just s
          • Re: Tierra (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @09:13PM (#11664110)


            > Even when we believe they are false, ideas like Creationism threaten to unravel the framework by which we understand the world.

            Huh? Does the idea of a flat earth threaten to unravel astronomy and planetology? Does the idea of alchemy threaten to unravel chemisty?

            > We feel better if we are able to rationally take apart offending ideas, but, failing that, we will mostly settle for just shouting them down when we are among those who we feel sure will agree one way or the other.

            Sorry, but geologists rationally took apart creationism 200 years ago.

            > Frankly, 99% of the /. community lacks the scientific background to really understand and refute the claims of Creationists.

            Oh, please. Most of their claims are simple logical fallacies and/or attempts to 'refute' science by misrepresenting well known facts or arguing that Darwin was a baby raper.

            • Re: Tierra (Score:3, Interesting)

              Sorry, but geologists rationally took apart creationism 200 years ago.

              I've said it before and I'll say it again - the computer you're using, the chair in which you sit, the glass from which you drink all had an intelligent designer. What makes the planet and the universe different? To be quite frank, I think the chances of so many different species of life forming on one planet from some primordial soup is pretty far out there. I think it takes more faith to believe in the (ever changing) beliefs of
              • Re: Tierra (Score:4, Insightful)

                by Dusabre ( 176445 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @05:46AM (#11666136) Homepage
                Who designed God?
              • Re: Tierra (Score:4, Insightful)

                by dustmite ( 667870 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @06:34AM (#11666252)

                I think it takes more faith to believe in the (ever changing) beliefs of science

                Well there's your problem right there: If you want beliefs that are comfortingly and reassuringly rock solid and stable and never change, then science really isn't for you. The "beliefs" in science must change as we learn new information that either adds to or contradicts previous theories. Only babies need comforting 'fairy tale explanations' of the world (because the idea that Santa doesn't exist is too upsetting) ... science is for grown-ups, who are able to handle the idea that we don't yet know all the answers but are still learning without crumbling. And science, ironically, is why we have chairs and computers - the computer you're using was created by the very scientists you're dissing, using "beliefs" that go far beyond the information the Bible has to offer. If we stuck to your faith, we'd still be living in mud huts and fetching water from the river, thank God for science is all I can say.

            • Re: Tierra (Score:4, Funny)

              by danila ( 69889 ) on Monday February 14, 2005 @06:37AM (#11666260) Homepage
              Baby raper? Was it anything like this:

              Evolution: Rap It Up!
              (When rapping, follow the rhythm of
              Salt-N-Pepa's "None of Your Business.")

              Chorus
              If I want to teach tonight. Evolution? Right!
              None of your business.
              If you want to be a freak 'n teach it on the weekend,
              None of my business.

              What chu doin' with their lives
              Leavin' evolution out?
              Don't chu think that you should make a stand
              and stop the doubts? Ha!

              Darwin, Mayer, Watson, Crick,
              Mendel(son) 'n old Lamarck,
              Retro-, transpo-, hepadn-,
              Makes you want to barf? Right!

              Flu is evolution too
              And you thought you were so safe.
              AIDS 'n cold sores-scary stuff but
              Changes we've all met. So. . . .

              Now you know just what IT is.
              Change and Evolution. Same!
              Don't be suckered into playing
              Brown vs. Board games.

              (Chorus).
              If I want to teach tonight. Evolution? Right!
              None of your business.
              If you want to be a freak 'n teach it on the weekend,
              None of my business.

              Go for it.

              Source [woodrow.org]
          • Re:Tierra (Score:4, Informative)

            by Evil Pete ( 73279 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @10:08PM (#11664424) Homepage

            The reality is that attacking Creationists is so much fun. Their comically stupid in the way they repeat their arguments ad infinitum, yet it stimulates you to read stuff you don't normally read. However, it does radicalise you too much. Which is why I stopped. But lots of fun. And yeah at the end of it you just can't treat them seriously, they don't even pass the Turing Test as far as I can see they are so mechanical in their thought processes. Sad but true.

      • Re:Tierra (Score:4, Insightful)

        by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @09:32PM (#11664219)
        Funny, the only people I see talking about creationism in this thread are the folks who are looking for an excuse to belittle creationists. But at the time I loaded the comments there were zero creationist post and 3 posts making fun of creationists.

        Tell me again, who was taking the discussion off topic?


        Try reading at -1. That might help the creationists show up.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:36PM (#11662534)
    Oh God. That was close...
  • by Garg ( 35772 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:36PM (#11662537) Homepage
    these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them, by playing dead.

    Cool! A new excuse... next time someone calls me at 3AM and says one of my programs has died, I'll just tell them it's playing dead and call me in the morning.

    Garg
  • This reminds me of (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rabbit78 ( 822735 )
    .. one of the best games ever. Digital Life in Creatures. This simulates biochemistry, neural activity, genetics among other this and is great fun.

    http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/creatures_ind ex.php [gamewarede...ment.co.uk]

    Go get yourself a free copy of Docking Station (the online version of this game) for Linux or Windows:

    http://www.gamewaredevelopment.co.uk/ds/ds_index.p hp [gamewarede...ment.co.uk]
  • by Nine Tenths of The W ( 829559 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:38PM (#11662546)
    Is the digital creationists, who'll tell us that Computer Science is an atheist lie and all programs are created by the Giant Sky Pixie^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H God.
  • by Duke Machesne ( 453316 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:38PM (#11662548)
    I'd like to see this run as a distributed computing project, as a sort of race to achieve measurable consciousnessness among the organisms.
  • This has been done before, it's been around since at least the mid 1980's possibly earlier - it was caleld Core Wars. This evolved into another similar more advanced version called CRobots... Short programs are written to "attack" the other by overwriting the other's memory space. They must alternate between "defending" their own space and "attacking" the other guys's... First to blow stack loses!

    Here's some links:

    Corewars:

    Home Page [corewars.org]

    Source Forge Page [sourceforge.net]

    CRobots:

    CRobots Home Page [nyx.net]
  • by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:41PM (#11662565) Homepage
    The only sentience that humans have experience with is our own, and I think it is safe to conclude that most scientists working on AI projects would try to replicate human sentience either intentionally or unintentially. Human beings have a very, very robust survival instinct and are extremely destructive when threatened. Do we really want to take the risk that we will create an AI that has our suvival instinct as well as a human-style thought process?

    I have caught flak for it in the past, but I have argued for a constitutional amendment banning the U.S. military from employing robotic combat units as anything more than a small minority of our combat forces. The last thing we need is either a weak AI or strong AI being used as the basis for taking over our military and then taking over our country. That's always seemed to be Hollywood's greatest feare. He who controls the AI controls the nation. From Terminator to the Matrix, the dark side of AI has been presented, but how many people don't take it seriously because it's "just a movie?"

    I have no problem with limited AI research, but I'll be the first to admit that I am something of a technophobe when it comes to AI. It's simply because of the fact that what we are doing is a playing God with a type of intelligence that is quite suitable for quickly taking total control over our civilization. It makes as much sense to me as putting our worst enemy in charge of our national defense in exchange for a nice chunk of change every month.

    This is the classical arrogance. We think that we can control another intelligent being. If we can't control a third world nation that can't possibly wage a real war against us without being obliterated from the face of God's creation within literally a few days if we tried hard, then how can we control a mechanical intelligence that can adapt and grow and potentially learn how to control everything from Wall Street to our strategic defense?

    The reason that T3 was so scary to me was that it was the ultimate combination of a rogue AI and grid computing. The only way to stop that new version of skynet would be a scorched Earth policy on our entire electrical grid to power off every node.

    And lastly, how on Earth do we expect to negotiate with a hostile AI? What could we possibly offer it except absolute fealty? It has no sensual desires, no use for wealth, only perhaps power over other intellects.
    • Don't worry, we will have by then Gundams to fight off the Mobile Dolls.
    • by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:49PM (#11662646) Journal
      I see your point on one level...but on another... AI is so far from anything you talk about happening, it's not even funny. I remember how dissapointed I was when I took my first AI class in undergrad--everything seemed just like hacks to me. don't worry--that world class chess AI is no closer to figuring out, well anything that doesn't involve a chess game than..I can't even come up with an analogy to illustrate my point :-p

      Suffice it to say that AI as it stands today is not intelligent. A chess program can play chess, but that's all it can do. A robot designed to get from point a to point b can do that, maybe well, but it can't play chess--it's not like AI has an IQ that can be transferred to having a conversation or thinking about taking over the world.

      Likewise, learning systems have a long ways to go too. My Prof. was not a fan of neural networks, so I could be biased, but even HOLLYWOOD neural networks have a rather limited use.

      I would worry about any one of about a trillion things before I would worry about AI taking over the world.

      Actually I kind of object to the term AI in general, for reasons above..
    • Just like genetic engineering, it will be done, you cannot stop it. Somebody somewhere will work on it, study it, develop it. We can bury our heads in the sand and pretend everything nothing is happening, or we can study it openly.
      If at some point an AI gains sentience, would you like to know almost everything about its construction and how it functions so there is a starting point to stop or reason with it; or start from zero, with little to no understanding.
    • The only sentience that humans have experience with is our own, and I think it is safe to conclude that most scientists working on AI projects would try to replicate human sentience either intentionally or unintentially.

      sex one of the other major driving influences besides survival, and no doubt will be part of the driving force for AI. i've heard many sexual disorders stem from a desire to have a completely submissive and totally nonjudgemental partner.

      much of the utilization of UNintelligent machines

  • I guess this is the first step to the Matrix. I guess Jessus will become Neo.
  • by tktk ( 540564 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:45PM (#11662598)
    PETA announces a spin-off group, PETDA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Digital Animals.

    PETDA protesters are currently rushing to surround the offices of Michigan State University and Nintendo.

    • From their download page [brandeis.edu]:
      NOTE: The golem@Home project has concluded. After accumulating several Million CPU hours on this project and reviewing many evolved creatures we have concluded that merely more CPU is not sufficient to evolve complexity: The evolutionary process appears to be hitting a complexity barrier that is not traversable using direct mutation-selection processes, due to the exponential nature of the problem.
      • by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:26PM (#11662924) Homepage Journal
        Well their mechanism for transforming genotype to phenotype isn't exactly complex. That results in a limited search space. Their means for simulating competition is pretty weak too (they simply race the organisms, there's no competition for resources).
  • Not "virus like" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Syre ( 234917 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:50PM (#11662655)
    Viruses replicate by taking over the mechanisms of a host cell. They have no ability to replicate on their own.

    What these researches have created are "digital organisms" which are intended to emluate cells. They don't need to invade other systems to replicate, but do it on their own within the runtime enviroment the researches set up.

    • Re:Not "virus like" (Score:5, Informative)

      by mercere99 ( 193493 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:48PM (#11663083) Homepage
      This is a very good point. Computer viruses actually have the computer as a "host" and hence fit the definition well. We tend to compare the digital organisms to computer viruses as a way of explaining them to people, but you are right that they're not the same thing.

      We are, however, doing some research on viruses within Avida. Specifically, we allow organisms to inject small snippets of code into each other. Sometimes these code segments could have the ability to take over the replication mechanisms inside of the digital organisms host and force them to use up their resources to make more copies of the snippet. These are much closer to the classical definition of a virus.

      Dr. Charles Ofria
      Director, MSU Digital Evolution Lab
  • by brian0918 ( 638904 ) <[brian0918] [at] [gmail.com]> on Sunday February 13, 2005 @05:54PM (#11662683)
    I just started using this thing, and all of a sudden I heard a quiet "Move zig..." over the speakers....
  • by Hellasboy ( 120979 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @06:25PM (#11662914)
    we got non-believers in Michigan
  • Reminds me of Intelligent Design versus Darwinism. Allow me to yammer on for a bit and I'll explain why:

    Evolution did occur (scientific findings are in the latest issue of "Duh" magazine), but the question is how it occured. Darwinism doesn't explain everything as tidily as some may think. ID [actionbioscience.org] defender and Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University Michael Behe posturises biochemistry reveals a cellular world of such astonishing complexity and molecules so "precisely tailored" as to make inexplicable by gradual evolution. Only by an intelligent designer, i.e., God could much of this be plausibly explained. Behe goes on to say some systems can't be produced by natural selection because "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." Heavy stuff, but relative to this virus-like digital life. This is a good example of how God could've started the evolutionary ball rolling.

    Darwinism and Creationism are not mutually exclusive. Our Heavenly Father could very well have used the evolutionary mechanism to bring about ideal living conditions for Adam and Eve, as well as help them and their offspring be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), or, as Slashdot puts it, "replicate, mutate randomly, and compete with each other".
    • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @08:56PM (#11664004)


      > Darwinism doesn't explain everything as tidily as some may think.

      ID doesn't explain anything at all.

      > Behe goes on to say some systems can't be produced by natural selection because "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional."

      His IC argument ignores the possibility of changing the function of a system, which is probably the most common way evolution acts.

      > Heavy stuff

      I would have said "deep".

      ID is nothing but creationist apologetics, bowlderized to try to sneak it past the US court system.

  • Progranisms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @07:11PM (#11663285) Journal
    This reminds me of the "Progranisms" project I saw over on the Gentoo Linux forums:

    http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-255505-highli ght-progranism.html [gentoo.org]
    http://www.progranism.com/ [progranism.com]

    Basically some guy put together an executable which makes a few (mutated) copies of itself when it runs, then executes those copies after a short delay. The idea is that executables might evolve which show interesting behaviors.

    You can download his source code here:

    http://www.progranism.com/junk/progranism-2.3.1.c [progranism.com]

    Because I like doing strange things, I made a variant of the program which mutates the source code and recompiles it (mutating until it gets something compilable), rather than mutating the executable directly:

    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/progranism/progr anism-neilh.c [caltech.edu]
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/progranism/progr anism-neilh-condensed.c [caltech.edu]
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~neilh/progranism/ [caltech.edu] (some cleanup and maintenance scripts)

    Unfortunately, it's stuck in a pretty steep local minima -- it makes some trivial mutations, but nothing major. One interesting possibility would be to have it search your hard drive for other executables and source files, and try to "mate" with those.

    Another scary possibility would be to have viruses/worms with non-trivial evolution capabilities. That'd be a pretty nasty outbreak to try to control.

    Finally, a rather neat-looking project is AI.Planet [sourceforge.net], which is trying to create an 3D evolving ecosystem/world of intelligent "organisms." Framsticks [alife.pl], a 3D life simulation project, is also pretty cool.
  • by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @07:29PM (#11663419) Journal
    I guess one nice thing about open source software is that even those who disagree with you can help you. :)

    From the article:

    When the Avida team published their first results on the evolution of complexity in 2003, they were inundated with e-mails from creationists. Their work hit a nerve in the antievolution movement and hit it hard. A popular claim of creationists is that life shows signs of intelligent design, especially in its complexity. They argue that complex things could never have evolved, because they don't work unless all their parts are in place. But as Adami points out, if creationists were right, then Avida wouldn't be able to produce complex digital organisms. A digital organism may use 19 or more simple routines in order to carry out the equals operation. If you delete any of the routines, it can't do the job. "What we show is that there are irreducibly complex things and they can evolve," says Adami.

    The Avida team makes their software freely available on the Internet, and creationists have downloaded it over and over again in hopes of finding a fatal flaw. While they've uncovered a few minor glitches, Ofria says they have yet to find anything serious. "We literally have an army of thousands of unpaid bug testers," he says. "What more could you want?"
  • Possible Use? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yrogerg ( 858571 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @09:18PM (#11664133)
    "these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them"

    Imagine the video games that could come out of this?
  • by tooyoung ( 853621 ) on Sunday February 13, 2005 @10:26PM (#11664515)
    This is no news in the AI community, algorithms such as GA's long ago learned how to add numbers, etc. I won't even go into detail here as I assume most readers are aware of this

    This story is merely a case of someone who is excited about their work explaining it to an author who doesn't know as much about the subject matter. The author then turns around and writes a story for the lay-person who is not versed in the field. These people in turn jump to humorous conclusions.

    This is a common occurance in magazines such as Discover and Popular Science, as much as I enjoy them. A good example is stories on robots, such as Honda's ASIMO. People see ASIMO do amazing things and assume that in 10-15 years we will have these robots in our homes. What the articles often fail to mention is that while ASIMO can do complex tasks, it has very limited ability to recognize a situation, such as a staircase in front of it, and decide on a course of action to take, such as executing its stair climbing procedure.

    The true point of the article is that AI algorithms can teach us things about evolution. To make grand jumps and assume that these programs are even in the same playing field as SkyNet or the Matrix is to miss the main point.

    As I said above, this is merely the case of a complex subject being explained in a way that is easy to digest for the masses. Even someone who had only taken a few graduate AI courses would find that many misguided statements are made in the article.
  • by Eythian ( 552130 ) <robinNO@SPAMkallisti.net.nz> on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:07AM (#11665091) Homepage

    The Tierra [his.atr.jp] project has been around for many years, but seems to be pretty slow moving. It works in a somewhat similar fashion, but has its issues, such as only really optimising for reproduction speed (which is correlated with small size), and so you miss some potentially interesting results as the system tends away from complexity.

    A friend and I have been talking about writing something that will use some of the ideas from this system, and a bunch of our own, but haven't really gotten very far yet, aside from writing some notes and some prototype code.

  • by halcyon1234 ( 834388 ) <halcyon1234@hotmail.com> on Monday February 14, 2005 @02:06AM (#11665520) Journal
    Among such feats as learning to add and compare numbers, these digital life forms also once avoided scientists attempts at "killing" them, by playing dead. You can download the project yourself from SourceForge."

    Let me get this straight. You, the scientists who created "viruses" that can become intelligent and nigh-unkillable, want me, and 1,000,000 computer geeks, to download and run said viruses?

    Yeah, I've seen one too many Outer Limits to fall for that one...

  • by TqUhpiQaw ( 859283 ) <spamme@psychonaut[ ]l.org ['ica' in gap]> on Monday February 14, 2005 @12:02PM (#11668785) Homepage
    AFAICT, at this point the system is treating food (numbers that can be added) and code (the instructions the organisms are made of) as distinct kinds of matter. How about instead of just feeding numbers into the system, postulate that code, food and maybe processor time (energy?) can be traded/transformed into each other, and are conserved at some level - e.g. a "dead" organism can serve as a food source for another.

    We could see the emergence of new behavioral patterns - predators, carrion eaters, parasites, and God knows what else.

"Pull the trigger and you're garbage." -- Lady Blue

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