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Artificial life, also known as alife or a-life, is the study of life, or more specifically the evolution of life, through the use of artificial models or artifacts. Most commonly the term specifically refers to simulating life processes in a computer simulation, however wet alife, the study of artificially created proteins and other life related molecules, can be considered alife, too.
Overview Artificial life studies the evolution of agents, or populations of individual life forms, in computer simulated artificial environments. The goal is to study phenomenon found in real life evolution in a controlled manner, hopefully to eliminate some of the inherant limitations of evolutionary studies using live bacteria or mice. The simulated nature of the organisms and environments also allows for unorthodox of impossible experiments (such as a comparison of lamarckian evolution and natural selection). Also sometimes included in the umbrella term "artificial life" are other agent based emergent properties, such as the development of economies or societies. The common thread between all "artificial life" is the concept of an iterative population approach: generations of agents which can mutate and become fitter over time. Techniques Artificial Intelligence AI research has always been the favorite older sibling to alife. Artificial Chemistry Artificial chemistry started as a method within the alife community to abstract the processes of chemical reactions. Evolutionary Algorithms for Optimization Problems Although not strictly alife, many optimization algorithms have been crafted which borrow from or closely mirror alife techniques. The primary difference lies in explicitly defining the fitness of an agent by its ability to solve a problem, instead of its ability to find food, reproduce, or avoid death. Philosophy At present the definition of life commonly accepted does not allow for any alife simulations to be considered "alive". However, different opinions about artificial life's potential have arisen: History Main article: history of artificial life Criticism ALife has had a controversial history; John Maynard Smith criticized certain artificial life work in 1995 as "fact-free science". However, the recent publication of artificial life articles in widely read journals such as Science and Nature is evidence that artificial life techniques are becoming more accepted in the mainstream, at least as a method of studying evolution. Generally the lack of biologists and over abundance of computer scientists in the field has hurt the field's credibility within mainstream biology. Notable Simulators | ||||||||
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