The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities

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@Article{Lehman:2020:alife,

• author = "Joel Lehman and Jeff Clune and Dusan Misevic and Christoph Adami and Lee Altenberg and Julie Beaulieu and Peter J. Bentley and Samuel Bernard and Guillaume Beslon and David M. Bryson and Nick Cheney and Patryk Chrabaszcz and Antoine Cully and Stephane Doncieux and Fred C. Dyer and Kai Olav Ellefsen and Robert Feldt and Stephan Fischer and Stephanie Forrest and Antoine Frenoy and Christian Gagne and Leni {Le Goff} and Laura M. Grabowski and Babak Hodjat and Frank Hutter and Laurent Keller and Carole Knibbe and Peter Krcah and Richard E. Lenski and Hod Lipson and Robert MacCurdy and Carlos Maestre and Risto Miikkulainen and Sara Mitri and David E. Moriarty and Jean-Baptiste Mouret and Anh Nguyen and Charles Ofria and Marc Parizeau and David Parsons and Robert T. Pennock and William F. Punch and Thomas S. Ray and Marc Schoenauer and Eric Schulte and Karl Sims and Kenneth O. Stanley and Francois Taddei and Danesh Tarapore and Simon Thibault and Richard Watson and Westley Weimer and Jason Yosinski",
• title = "The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities",
• journal = "Artificial Life",
• year = "2020",
• volume = "26",
• number = "2",
• pages = "274--306",
• month = "Spring",
• keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, Surprise, creativity, digital evolution, experimental evolution, evolutionary computation",
• ISSN = "1064-5462",
• DOI = "doi:10.1162/artl_a_00319",
• size = "33 pages",
• abstract = "Evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations that often surprise the scientists who discover them. However, the creativity of evolution is not limited to the natural world: Artificial organisms evolving in computational environments have also elicited surprise and wonder from the researchers studying them. The process of evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution can provide examples of how their evolving algorithms and organisms have creatively subverted their expectations or intentions, exposed unrecognized bugs in their code, produced unexpectedly adaptations, or engaged in behaviors and outcomes, uncannily convergent with ones found in nature. Such stories routinely reveal surprise and creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. Bugs are fixed, experiments are refocused, and one-off surprises are collapsed into a single data point. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and life like digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This article is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems.",

}

Genetic Programming entries for Joel Lehman Jeff Clune Dusan Misevic Christoph Adami Lee Altenberg Julie Beaulieu Peter J Bentley Samuel Bernard Guillaume Beslon David M Bryson Nick Cheney Patryk Chrabaszcz Antoine Cully Stephane Doncieux Fred C Dyer Kai Olav Ellefsen Robert Feldt Stephan Fischer Stephanie Forrest Antoine Frenoy Christian Gagne Leni K Le Goff Laura M Grabowski Babak Hodjat Frank Hutter Laurent Keller Carole Knibbe Peter Krcah Richard E Lenski Hod Lipson Robert MacCurdy Carlos Maestre Risto Miikkulainen Sara Mitri David E Moriarty Jean-Baptiste Mouret Anh Quang Nguyen Charles Ofria Marc Parizeau David Parsons Robert T Pennock William F Punch Thomas S Ray Marc Schoenauer Eric Schulte Karl Sims Kenneth O Stanley Francois Taddei Danesh Tarapore Simon Thibault Richard A Watson Westley Weimer Jason Yosinski

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