Scientists create digital bug-life

berniecase wrote to us with coverage of the creation of digital life, in a computer-petri dish. The bugs succed by getting more processing time and thus living more, and reproducing more. This type of experiment has been going on for while, which sparks the debate of digital life? Is it coming? Is it already here? Will it never arrive?

Comments

Tierra

[DanaL]

I was a little disappointed that the authors didn't mention Tierra, the a-life system that Avida was based on. Tierra has been around since the 80s and can be found at: the Tierra homepage.

The programs that evolve in Tierra get pretty interesting, and include the evolution of parasites and virus programs. Pretty neat stuff!

of similar subject...

[cswiii]

has anyone ever used the Tierra artificial life software? I downloaded it years ago; hardly knew what to do with it, as I knew nothing about C.. got it to compile, but it always locked up my 386...

This article piqued my interest in the software again, and I found some info on it, for those interested...

links:

Web page
FTP Site
Documentation

There's a very good FAQ about this

[Kaa]

Big, well-written and funny: called The Hitchhiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation (FAQ in comp.ai.genetic). Here is the relevant extact:

Obtaining copies of this guide
This FAQ is available between postings on rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/ai-faq/genet ic/ as the files: part1 to part6. The FAQ may also be retrieved by e-mail from . Send a message to the mail-server with "help" and "index" in the body on separate lines for more information.

A PostScript version is also available. This looks really crisp (using boldface, italics, etc.), and is available for those who prefer offline reading. Get it from ENCORE (See Q15.3) in file FAQ/hhgtec.ps.gz (the ASCII text versions are in the same directory too). In Germany, its also available from the SyS ftp-server: lumpi.informatik.uni-dortmund.de:/pub/EA/docs/hhgt ec.ps.gz

ENCORE is a set of FTP sites, including
ftp://ftp.krl.caltech.edu:/pub/EC/Welcome.html
ftp://ftp.cs.wayne.edu:/pub/EC/Welcome.htm
ftp://coast.cs.purdue.edu:/pub/EC/Welcome.html
and others


Kaa

Programs with an Attitude

[Accipiter]

Microsoft provided Ofria's mentor, Chris Adami at Caltech and his colleague Richard Lenski of Michigan State University with $50,000 in seed money to steer the project toward the study the evolvability and robustness of computer languages.

"You can see why Microsoft is interested in robust languages because theirs is not," Adami said.

Damn....Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Jeez!

"Why can you randomly change instructions and these things tend to survive?" Adler said. "If you went in and did that with Excel, the results wouldn't be good."

Yeah! Take another bite of that hand... heh

Possible applications might include tougher operating systems, programming languages, applications and virtual machines.

Great. Just what we need....Microsoft Windows with a bad temper. "WHAT? You deleted parts of my REGISTRY? Watch this Blue-Screen, Asshole."

Or how about a C compiler that decides it wants to play a joke on you, and deletes a block of your code.

Don't bother fighting them, because the suckers will adapt, or mutate or some crap, and piss you off even more. (I'd hate to see them put that stuff into MS Bob. That would be scary.)

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

As others have said...

[jd]

This has been done before. I've not checked every post here, but in case nobody's given this example, I would strongly recommend checking out the code for "Bugs", which was given in the Scientific American a good few years back.

"Bugs" was a genetically evolving life-form, where there wasn't any pre-defined "good" or "bad", only genetic traits and an energy level. If the energy level exceeded a certain point, the cell could divide. If it fell to zero, the cell died. The traits defined how the cell moved and responded. These would randomly shift, by a very small amount, with each new generation. The cell picked up food that was randomly scattered throughout the environment the cells lived in. Within a few thousand generations, you saw a massive shift in behaviour, according to the function used for food distribution.

Re:Life?

[ethereal]

Possibly more important than mutation is genetic crossover, where organisms swap parts of their genome. I've been reading "Artificial Life" by Steven Levy recently, and some of the researchers in his book were able to get the same evolutionary improvements in their creatures with mostly crossover and only a little mutation. In some cases they had mutation turned off all the way and evolution still ground right along. I recommend the book to anyone who's interested in the subject - it makes a great introduction to the topic and covers a lot of ground.

Re:Big deal, I've done this before many times.

[jd]

Hey, you're missing a line! :)

/* Gold gold gold gold gold gold gold gold gold */

(Assuming your artificial lifeform is a Discworld Dwarf, that is. :)

Re:My only question:

[jd]

Hey! That's a thought! Get this life program onto Windows, and ship it there immediately! Maybe we can get Bill Gates excommunicated, or Windows 2000 CD's burned at the stake.

Re:fah, this is old school...

[jd]

Yeah, but those all escaped from the lab and have been infecting computers and computer stores for years. Sadly, therapy is traumatic and no effective vaccine has been found. However, by taking suitable precautions, computers can minimise the risks of infection.