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Artif Life 2022 May 19:1-38. Epub 2022 May 19.

Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Geography.

The modern economy is both a complex self-organizing system and an innovative, evolving one. Contemporary theory, however, treats it essentially as a static equilibrium system. Here we propose a formal framework to capture its complex, evolving nature. Read More

Artif Life 2022 May 19:1-3. Epub 2022 May 19.

Monash University, Australia, Department of Data Science and AI.

Artif Life 2022 May 19:1-20. Epub 2022 May 19.

University of Birmingham, School of Computer Science.

It is already well known that environmental variation has a big effect on real evolution, and similar effects have been found in evolutionary artificial life simulations. In particular, a lot of research has been carried out on how the various evolutionary outcomes depend on the noise distributions representing the environmental changes, and how important it is for models to use inverse power-law distributions with the right noise colour. However, there are two distinct factors of relevance-the average total magnitude of change per unit time and the distribution of individual change magnitudes-and misleading results may emerge if those factors are not properly separated. Read More

Artif Life 2022 May 12:1-6. Epub 2022 May 12.

Monash University, Faculty of Law, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

The emergence of sex robots raises important issues about what it means to be human and the commodification of love, companionship, and sex. This commentary discusses the following question: If some members of society relate to robots as "humans," what does this mean for society's conceptualisation of personhood and intimate relationships? How love is expressed between individuals is normally considered a very private expression of companionship that should remain in the private sphere. This article examines whether sex robots should be subject to public regulation given the broader societal impacts of their ability to emotionally connect and elicit empathy from humans. Read More

Artif Life 2022 May 12:1-4. Epub 2022 May 12.

Tufts University, Department of Computer Science, Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory.

Paolo Euron's "Uncanny Beauty: Aesthetics of Companionship, Love, and Sex Robots" lays out a vision for appreciating sex robots in aesthetic terms, centering the concept of "beauty" as a measure of what they can inspire culturally and existentially. In these comments I turn toward the field of human-robot interaction and the ethical challenges that inhabit the core of such an aesthetic turn. Read More

Artif Life 2022 May 12:1-10. Epub 2022 May 12.

Michigan State University, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action Program in Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior.

Artif Life 2022 May 12:1-16. Epub 2022 May 12.

European International University - Bangkok.

In the last few years there has been a lively debate on humanoid robots interacting with humans in fields where human appearance and likeness may be essential. The debate has been bolstered by advancing AI technologies as well as increasing economic interest and public attention. The feasibility, inevitability, or ethical opportunity of companionship, love, and sex robots has been discussed. Read More

Artif Life 2022 Mar 29:1-12. Epub 2022 Mar 29.

California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences.

We demonstrate a novel computational architecture based on fluid convection logic gates and heat flux-mediated information flows. Our previous work demonstrated that Boolean logic operations can be performed by thermally driven convection flows. In this work, we use numerical simulations to demonstrate a different , but universal Boolean logic operation (NOR), performed by simpler convective gates. Read More

Artif Life 2022 Mar 14:1-19. Epub 2022 Mar 14.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Evolution and development operate at different timescales; generations for the one, a lifetime for the other. These two processes, the basis of much of life on earth, interact in many non-trivial ways, but their temporal hierarchy-evolution overarching development-is observed for most multicellular life forms. When designing robots, however, this tenet lifts: It becomes-however natural-a design choice. Read More

Artif Life 2022 Mar 11:1-23. Epub 2022 Mar 11.

Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics, Prague.

One of the main goals of Artificial Life is to research the conditions for the emergence of life, not necessarily as it is, but as it could be. Artificial chemistries are one of the most important tools for this purpose because they provide us with a basic framework to investigate under which conditions metabolisms capable of reproducing themselves, and ultimately, of evolving, can emerge. While there have been successful attempts at producing examples of emergent self-reproducing metabolisms, the set of rules involved remain too complex to shed much light on the underlying principles at work. Read More

Artif Life 2022 Feb 11:1-19. Epub 2022 Feb 11.

Keele University, UK, School of Computing and Mathematics.

Simulations of evolutionary dynamics often employ white noise as a model of stochastic environmental variation. Whilst white noise has the advantages of being simply generated and analytically tractable, empirical analyses demonstrate that most real environmental time series have power spectral densities consistent with pink or red noise, in which lower frequencies contribute proportionally greater amplitudes than higher frequencies. Simulated white noise environments may therefore fail to capture key components of real environmental time series, leading to erroneous results. Read More

Artif Life 2022 Feb 11:1-24. Epub 2022 Feb 11.

Australian National University, School of Computing.

Discrete gene regulatory networks (GRNs) play a vital role in the study of robustness and modularity. A common method of evaluating the robustness of GRNs is to measure their ability to regulate a set of perturbed gene activation patterns back to their unperturbed forms. Usually, perturbations are obtained by collecting random samples produced by a predefined distribution of gene activation patterns. Read More

Artif Life 2021 Dec 7:1-36. Epub 2021 Dec 7.

University of California, Santa Cruz, Computational Media, Creative Coding Lab.

We present Monte Carlo Physarum Machine (MCPM): a computational model suitable for reconstructing continuous transport networks from sparse 2D and 3D data. MCPM is a probabilistic generalization of Jones's (2010) agent-based model for simulating the growth of Physarum polycephalum (slime mold). We compare MCPM to Jones's work on theoretical grounds, and describe a task-specific variant designed for reconstructing the large-scale distribution of gas and dark matter in the Universe known as the cosmic web. Read More

Artif Life 2021 Nov 3:1-36. Epub 2021 Nov 3.

University of York, Department of Computer Science.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were originally inspired by the brain; however, very few models use evolution and development, both of which are fundamental to the construction of the brain. We describe a simple neural model, called IMPROBED, in which two neural programs construct an artificial brain that can simultaneously solve multiple computational problems. One program represents the neuron soma and the other the dendrite. Read More

Artif Life 2021 11;27(2):113-130

Binghamton University, State University of New York.

The El Farol Bar problem highlights the issue of bounded rationality through a coordination problem where agents must decide individually whether or not to attend a bar without prior communication. Each agent is provided a set of attendance predictors (or decision-making strategies) and uses the previous bar attendances to guess bar attendance for a given week to determine if the bar is worth attending. We previously showed how the distribution of used strategies among the population settles into an attractor by using a spatial phase space. Read More

Artif Life 2021 11;27(2):105-112

Binghamton University, SUNY, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Center for Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems.

Cellular automata (CA) have been lauded for their ability to generate complex global patterns from simple local rules. The late English mathematician, John Horton Conway, developed his illustrious Game of Life (Life) CA in 1970, which has since remained one of the most quintessential CA constructions-capable of producing a myriad of complex dynamic patterns and computational universality. Life and several other Life-like rules have been classified in the same group of aesthetically and dynamically interesting CA rules characterized by their complex behaviors. Read More

Artif Life 2021 11;27(2):131-137

Michigan State University, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, Program in Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior.

Artif Life 2021 11;27(2):73-74

University of York, Department of Computer Science.

Artif Life 2021 11;27(2):75-79

University of the West of England, Computer Science Research Centre.

The significant role of dendritic processing within neuronal networks has become increasingly clear. This letter explores the effects of including a simple dendrite-inspired mechanism into neuro-evolution. The phenomenon of separate dendrite activation thresholds on connections is allowed to emerge under an evolutionary process. Read More

Artif Life 2021 06;27(1):44-61

University College Dublin, School of Computer Science.

On the one hand, complexity science and enactive and embodied cognitive science approaches emphasize that people, as complex adaptive systems, are ambiguous, indeterminable, and inherently unpredictable. On the other, Machine Learning (ML) systems that claim to predict human behaviour are becoming ubiquitous in all spheres of social life. I contend that ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ML systems are close descendants of the Cartesian and Newtonian worldview in so far as they are tools that fundamentally sort, categorize, and classify the world, and forecast the future. Read More

Artif Life 2021 06;27(1):62-71

Ronin Institute.

Conway's Game of Life is the best-known cellular automaton. It is a classic model of emergence and self-organization, it is Turing-complete, and it can simulate a universal constructor. The Game of Life belongs to the set of semi-totalistic cellular automata, a family with 262,144 members. Read More

Artif Life 2021 06;27(1):26-43

Ronin Institute.

Recently we introduced a model of symbiosis, Model-S, based on the evolution of seed patterns in Conway's Game of Life. In the model, the fitness of a seed pattern is measured by one-on-one competitions in the Immigration Game, a two-player variation of the Game of Life. Our previous article showed that Model-S can serve as a highly abstract, simplified model of biological life: (1) The initial seed pattern is analogous to a genome. Read More

Artif Life 2021 06;27(1):15-25

University of the West of England, Department of Computer Science & Creative Technologies.

Sexual selection is a fundamental aspect of evolution for all eukaryotic organisms with mating types. This article suggests intersexual selection is best viewed as a mechanism with which to compensate for the unavoidable dynamics of coevolution between sexes that emerge with isogamy. Using the NKCS model it is shown by varying fitness landscape size, ruggedness, and connectedness, how a purely arbitrary trait preference sexual selection mechanism proves beneficial with high dependence between the sexes. Read More

Artif Life 2021 03;27(1):1-14

University of Canterbury, Biomathematics Research Centre.

The emergence of self-sustaining autocatalytic networks in chemical reaction systems has been studied as a possible mechanism for modeling how living systems first arose. It has been known for several decades that such networks will form within systems of polymers (under cleavage and ligation reactions) under a simple process of random catalysis, and this process has since been mathematically analyzed. In this paper, we provide an exact expression for the expected number of self-sustaining autocatalytic networks that will form in a general chemical reaction system, and the expected number of these networks that will also be uninhibited (by some molecule produced by the system). Read More

Artif Life 2021 Sep 1:1-21. Epub 2021 Sep 1.

Aston University, Ontario Tech University.

Understanding how evolutionary agents behave in complex environments is a challenging problem. Agents can be faced with complex fitness landscapes derived from multi-stage tasks, interaction with others, and limited environmental feedback. Agents that evolve to overcome these can sometimes access greater fitness, as a result of factors such as cooperation and tool use. Read More

Artif Life 2021 Sep 1:1-21. Epub 2021 Sep 1.

Amherst College.

In genetic programming, an evolutionary method for producing computer programs that solve specified computational problems, parent selection is ordinarily based on aggregate measures of performance across an entire training set. Lexicase selection, by contrast, selects on the basis of performance on random sequences of training cases; this has been shown to enhance problem-solving power in many circumstances. Lexicase selection can also be seen as better reflecting biological evolution, by modeling sequences of challenges that organisms face over their lifetimes. Read More

Artif Life 2021 11;27(2):80-104

Tufts University, Allen Discovery Center.

Many biological organisms regenerate structure and function after damage. Despite the long history of research on molecular mechanisms, many questions remain about algorithms by which cells can cooperate towards the same invariant morphogenetic outcomes. Therefore, conceptual frameworks are needed not only for motivating hypotheses for advancing the understanding of regeneration processes in living organisms, but also for regenerative medicine and synthetic biology. Read More

Artif Life 2021 Sep 1:1-26. Epub 2021 Sep 1.

Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics, Prague.

In order to develop systems capable of artificial evolution, we need to identify which systems can produce complex behavior. We present a novel classification method applicable to any class of deterministic discrete space and time dynamical systems. The method is based on classifying the asymptotic behavior of the average computation time in a given system before entering a loop. Read More

Artif Life 2021 Sep 1:1-16. Epub 2021 Sep 1.

University of Cambridge, UK.

Behavioral diversity seen in biological systems is, at the most basic level, driven by interactions between physical materials and their environment. In this context we are interested in falling paper systems, specifically the V-shaped falling paper (VSFP) system that exhibits a set of discrete falling behaviors across the morphological parameter space. Our previous work has investigated how morphology influences dominant falling behaviors in the VSFP system. Read More

Artif Life 2020 25;26(4):455-483. Epub 2021 Jan 25.

Nelson Mandela University, Department of Computing Sciences.

Taking inspiration from the navigation ability of humans, this study investigated a method of providing robotic controllers with a basic sense of position. It incorporated robotic simulators into robotic controllers to provide them with a mechanism to approximate the effects their actions had on the robot. Controllers with and without internal simulators were tested and compared. Read More