A Brief Look at ALife

What is artificial life, also known as ALife? With its roots in the cybernetics of the 1940s, ALife is a rapidly expanding, multidisciplinary field that spans biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science in order to understand the fundamentals of life itself. ALife as a field was named formally by Christopher Langton in 1986, and held its first conference in 1987.

Many scientists in the field take a constructionist approach to understanding life and life-like processes by attempting to model or build life and life-like behaviors, either in vitro or in silico.

ALife:

• Models known behaviors (flocking, swarming, mycelial growth).
• Asks “what if” - simulates imagined behaviors or forms; i.e. "Life as it could be."
• Embraces concepts of self-replication, adaptation, open-ended evolution, emergence, diverse intelligences.

Open-ended evolution has been identified by many scientists in the field as its grand challenge. Evolution has produced novelty for billions of years, never running out of possibilities (even when it "recycles" modes for adaptive flight or swimming). Artificial systems (whether AI or ALife) always plateau, none so far has achieved the seemingly endless novelty of biological evolution. (From our perspective, at least. Is biological evolution inherently plateau-free, or have we not reached it?)

Here is a breakdown of how the fields of AI and ALife intersect on the question:

ALife has many applications in biomedicine, robotics, and has been embraced by visual artists for decades. Among musicians, there has been less widespread engagement, but some individuals have made notable contributions. More about that in an upcoming page!

Some links for further reading:

A community-driven reference for ALife: https://alife.org/encyclopedia/

An ALife Expo by Imran Khan: https://alife-expo.org/

Official publications of the International Society for ALife: https://direct.mit.edu/artl

Community for ALife educators: https://alife-edu.github.io/