What is Artificial Life?

Answer 1

'Artificial Life' refers to man-made entities that display lifelike properties or behaviors. Usually it designates something made "from scratch" as opposed to something that is a mere modification of an existing life form.

Some desired attributes of artificial life would include

* the capacity to self-repair;

* the capacity to self-replicate or reproduce more of its kind;

* the capacity to adapt to its environment;

* the capacity to metabolize (acquire and use energy); * and the capacity to grow and/or behave teleologically (purposefully).

There are three approaches to artificial life:

# Biochemists strive to create artificial 'wetware', i.e. organisms we might recognize as generally like known protozoa, fungi, plants, or animals.

# Robotics labs seek to create robots that can move about autonomously, seek out their own energy sources, monitor and manipulate their environment. # Computer scientists devise individual entities or entire colonies that live out their 'lives' within an artificial software 'virtual' universe. This last is the most novel and controversial approach.

The related term 'Artificial Intelligence' refers to an artificial entity that can reason or work with symbols in a human-like way. It is generally accepted that human beings (and human intelligence) evolved from much simpler (and less intelligent) ancestral species. Thus some artificial life workers believe their simple creatures might, over the course of simulated evolution, give rise to quite intelligent descendants.

A number of international workshops and conferences have been held over the past 20 years bringing together top scientists to share their ideas and demonstrate their attempts at designing artificial life.