artificial life

1.
the simulation of any aspect of life, as through computers, robotics, or biochemistry.
Also called a-life, alife.
Origin
1990-95
Examples from the web for artificial life
  • He is less the poet of artificial life, than of nature and the feelings.
  • When the first of these artificial creatures showed that it could reproduce on its own, the age of artificial life began.
  • Surprisingly, more respondents were concerned about nuclear power than artificial life, stem cells or genetically modified crops.
  • From the smartest artificial brain to the first artificial life.
  • One particularly interesting kind of emergent computation, known as artificial life, may someday help answer these questions.
  • Perhaps people who have signed up as organ donors when they die could also have the option of artificial life sustenance.
  • It raises a lot of ethical concerns about creating and controlling artificial life.
  • We left off a few highly popular artificial life forms, and some short-circuited readers went haywire.
  • The company's artificial life team is currently developing software that will grow by learning to write its own code.
  • artificial life researchers talk about surfing the wave of increasing complexity.
artificial life in Science
artificial life  
The simulation of biological phenomena through the use of computer models and robotics.
artificial life in Technology
algorithm, application
(a-life) The study of synthetic systems which behave like natural living systems in some way. Artificial Life complements the traditional biological sciences concerned with the analysis of living organisms by attempting to create lifelike behaviours within computers and other artificial media. Artificial Life can contribute to theoretical biology by modelling forms of life other than those which exist in nature. It has applications in environmental and financial modelling and network communications.
There are some interesting implementations of artificial life using strangely shaped blocks. A video, probably by the company Artificial Creatures who build insect-like robots in Cambridge, MA (USA), has several mechanical implementations of artificial life forms.
See also evolutionary computing, Life.
[Christopher G. Langton (Ed.), "Artificial Life", Proceedings Volume VI, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. Addison-Wesley, 1989].
Yahoo! (https://yahoo.com/Science/Artificial_Life/).
Santa Fe Institute (https://alife.santafe.edu/).
The Avida Group (https://krl.caltech.edu/avida/Avida.html).
(1995-02-21)