Testing for Emergence in Artificial Life

AbstractImitating the transition from inanimate to living matter is a longstanding challenge. Artificial life has achieved computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve, but lacks self-organized hardwares akin to the self-assembly of the first living cells. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics has achieved lifelike self-organization in diverse physical systems, but has not yet met the open-ended evolution of living organisms. Here, I look for the emergence of an artificial-life code in a nonequilibrium physical system undergoing self-organization. I devise a toy model where the onset of self-replication of a quantum artificial organism (a chain of lambda systems) is owing to single-photon pulses added to a zero-temperature environment. I find that spontaneous mutations during self-replication are unavoidable in this model, due to rare but finite absorption of off-resonant photons. I also show that the replication probability is proportional to the absorbed work from the photon, thereby fulfilling a dissipative adaptation (a thermodynamic mechanism underlying lifelike self-organization). These results hint at self-replication as the scenario where dissipative adaptation (pointing towards convergence) coexists with open-ended evolution (pointing towards divergence).

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Epistemic practices in Bio Art

AI & Society ◽

10.1007/s00146-021-01152-w ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Suzanne Anker

Keyword(s):

Biological Sciences ◽

Visual Arts ◽

Artificial Life ◽

Scientific Data ◽

Cultural Imagination ◽

Epistemic Practices

AbstractThis paper addresses three aspects of Bio Art: iconography, artificial life, and wetware. The development of models for innovation require hybrid practices which generate knowledge through epistemic experimental practices. The intersection of art and the biological sciences contain both scientific data as well as the visualization of its cultural imagination. In the Bio Art Lab at the School of Visual Arts, artists use the tools of science to make art.

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Artificial life and ‘nature’s purposes’: The question of behavioral autonomy

Human Affairs ◽

10.1515/humaff-2020-0052 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 587-596

Author(s):

Elena Popa

Keyword(s):

Artificial Life ◽

Life Forms ◽

Behavioral Traits ◽

Ethical Implications ◽

Autonomous Behavior ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Behavioral Autonomy ◽

Synthetic Life ◽

Biological Organisms

AbstractThis paper investigates the concept of behavioral autonomy in Artificial Life by drawing a parallel to the use of teleological notions in the study of biological life. Contrary to one of the leading assumptions in Artificial Life research, I argue that there is a significant difference in how autonomous behavior is understood in artificial and biological life forms: the former is underlain by human goals in a way that the latter is not. While behavioral traits can be explained in relation to evolutionary history in biological organisms, in synthetic life forms behavior depends on a design driven by a research agenda, further shaped by broader human goals. This point will be illustrated with a case study on a synthetic life form. Consequently, the putative epistemic benefit of reaching a better understanding of behavioral autonomy in biological organisms by synthesizing artificial life forms is subject to doubt: the autonomy observed in such artificial organisms may be a mere projection of human agency. Further questions arise in relation to the need to spell out the relevant human aims when addressing potential social or ethical implications of synthesizing artificial life forms.

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