About Artificial Life

Artificial life, also known as alife or a-life, is the study of life through the use of human-made analogs of living systems. Computer scientist Christopher Langton coined the term in the late 1980s when he held the first "International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems" (otherwise known as Artificial Life I) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1987. His official conference announcement was the earliest description of a field which had previously barely existed:

Artificial life is the study of artificial systems that exhibit behavior characteristic of natural living systems. It is the quest to explain life in any of its possible manifestations, without restriction to the particular examples that have evolved on earth. This includes biological and chemical experiments, computer simulations, and purely theoretical endeavors. Processes occuring on molecular, social, and evolutionary scales are subject to investigation. The ultimate goal is to extract the logical form of living systems. Microelectronic technology and genetic engineering will soon give us the capability to create new life forms in silico as well as in vitro, This capacity will present humanity with the most far-reaching technical,theoretical and ethical challenges it has ever confronted. The time seems appropriate for a gathering of those involved in attempts simulate or synthesize aspects of living systems.

Although the study of artificial life does have some significant overlap with the study of artificial intelligence (AI), the two fields are very distinct in their history and approach. Organized AI research began early in the history of digital computers, and was often characterized in those years by a "top-down" approach based on complicated networks of rules. Students of alife did not have an organized field at all until the 1980s, and often worked in isolation, unaware of others doing similar work. Where they concerned themselves with intelligence at all, researchers tended to focus on the "bottom-up" nature of emergent behaviors.

  

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