Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Japanese artificial intelligence startupsSakana AI, together with OpenAI's publication of"ASAL" The paper (Automating the Search for Artificial Life with Foundation Models) plans to use artificial intelligence technology to search and discover ways to simulate artificial life.
Artificial life refers to the use of artificial intelligence to simulate living systems for research related to life. This concept was proposed by Christopher Langton, an American biologist, computer scientist, and one of the pioneers of the field of biomimetics, at the 1987 International Conference on the Generation and Simulation of Living Systems, held at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In the past, research on artificial life relied primarily on researchers' intuition and repeated experiments to create system designs that resemble life-like behaviors. However, it is not easy to simulate complex life behaviors by combining pre-predictions with simple rules.
Therefore, in the "ASAL" paper, the main focus will be on automatically observing the activities of biological cells, such as those seen under a microscope. In addition, new behaviors of cells will be recorded over time, and different activity characteristics will be learned to establish a life simulation system that imitates cellular activities.
The "ASAL" paper also points out that by utilizing basic models, it is possible to quantitatively analyze cellular activity behaviors that can currently only be evaluated qualitatively. This allows simulated behaviors to be amplified through quantification, while also allowing for analysis of a wider range of behavioral manifestations, making artificial life simulations more realistic.
There are already many artificial life development projects on the market, including the "virus" written by biologist Thomas Ray in 90 lines of code in the 80s and "cultivated" in a computer system, and the cellular automaton "Game of Life" proposed by British mathematician John Conway in 1970. Artificial life technology has also been used in video games, such as "Game of Life" created by British computer scientist Steve Grand in the 1990s.Creatures”, which can enable the artificial life in the game to have characteristics such as self-learning and genetic factors.
In addition, computer viruses and worms that are currently prevalent in many computer devices can be considered artificial life to some extent because they have the characteristics of behavioral replication and evolution, and even the ability to exchange information. However, they still lack the decision-making ability that life should have.
