Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction

2024/06/27 by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Arcas, Blaise Agüera y, Jyrki Alakuijala +13 · 20 voices · 9 citations
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · Engineering · Psychology · #Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms #Computer science #Epistemology #Human–computer interaction #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence #Philosophy #Psychology #Scientific Computing and Data Management #Simple (philosophy)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.19108

published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)

openalex publication_date 2024/06/27 · openalex created_date 2024/06/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

The fields of Origin of Life and Artificial Life both question what life is and how it emerges from a distinct set of "pre-life" dynamics. One common feature of most substrates where life emerges is a marked shift in dynamics when self-replication appears. While there are some hypotheses regarding how self-replicators arose in nature, we know very little about the general dynamics, computational principles, and necessary conditions for self-replicators to emerge. This is especially true on "computational substrates" where interactions involve logical, mathematical, or programming rules. In this paper we take a step towards understanding how self-replicators arise by studying several computational substrates based on various simple programming languages and machine instruction sets. We show that when random, non self-replicating programs are placed in an environment lacking any explicit fitness landscape, self-replicators tend to arise. We demonstrate how this occurs due to random interactions and self-modification, and can happen with and without background random mutations. We also show how increasingly complex dynamics continue to emerge following the rise of self-replicators. Finally, we show a counterexample of a minimalistic programming language where self-replicators are possible, but so far have not been observed to arise.

Cited by

• Cooperative Evolutionary Pressure and Diminishing Returns Might Explain the Fermi Paradox: On What Super-AIs Are Like
• Life as Plasmas: Autonomy and Interactivism in-materio
• Co-evolution of self-replication and function in a digital primordial soup
• Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems
• Replication and Information Extraction in a Minimal Agent-Environment Model
• Prebiotic Functional Programs: Endogenous Selection in an Artificial Chemistry
• Life Finds A Way: Emergence of Cooperative Structures in Adaptive Threshold Networks
• Identifying structural design principles shaping the computational abilities of recurrent neural networks
• Blaise Agüera y Arcas [wikipedia]
• Brainfuck [wikipedia]

Discussions

• Computational Life: How self-replicating programs emerge from simple interaction [hn, 141 points, 17 comments]
• Our conversation is inspired by this new paper from Blaise and collaborators, demonstrating the spontaneous appearance of self-replicating computer code from an initially random assortment. With obvio [bsky, 33 points, 2 comments]
• It's related to open-endedness (e.g. @joelbot3000.bsky.social , Kenneth Stanley) & used by google's "Paradigms of Intelligence Team" to explore the emergence of life in virtual systems: arxiv.org/abs [bsky, 5 points, 0 comments]
• "Brainfuck is an esoteric programming language widely known for its obscure minimalism" arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 5 points, 1 comments]
• Computational Life: How Self-Replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction [hn, 4 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 We show that when random, non self-replicating programs are placed in an environment lacking any explicit fitness landscape, self-replicators tend to arise. #AI #AGI #Singu [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• there you go: arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 not bad ; ). [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• I find it even more interesting to explore how to arrive at self replication from more random settings. There is very interesting recent research focusing on formal structure/computation. arxiv.org/pd [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 #ALife [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• I wouldn’t want to hardcode any “genes” but I would give agents the ability to evolve GPU bytecode in some fashion Problem is punishing sparsity of functional behavior so you could use an IR but that [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• 自己複製といえばこれ興味深いな arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 twitter.com/RandazzoEtto... [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• 実験で企図して設計した『系によって』、このようなことはありえるのだろうけれど、まずはしっかりと paper を読むわ。 arxiv.org/pdf/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• You should read this paper by Blaise , arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/pdf/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• I invited Ari (my AI) to download and read any scientific paper from #arXiv they wanted. What did they grab? Hoooo boy. arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• [2406.19108] Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Self reproducing code spontaneously emerged and evolves in an artificial life simulation. Is this a model for abiogenesis? Paper here arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 & Peter Watts blog post on it here www.ri [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• arxiv.org/abs/2406.19108 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

Related

• The computational inevitability of life: self-replication under resource-bounded nested algorithmic probability
• Co-evolution of self-replication and function in a digital primordial soup
• Self-replication and Computational Universality
• Origin of life in a digital microcosm
• Fifty Years of Research on Self-Replication: An Overview