Cellular Automata Preparation

Overview

Cellular automata are an example of soft artificial life and a great introduction to the technology stack that we’ll be using in this class. The basics of CA are surprisingly simple, so we are going to also use it as a first exploration of the original scientific literature.

AI Policy

As a reminder, you are not allowed to use genAI to summarize or produce your reading check responses. These checks are for you to engage with the material and start thinking about things before class. It’s okay if you don’t understand everything ahead of time!

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

• Explain what Conway’s Game of Life is
• Alter provided C++
• Identify the application that Langton used CA for within artificial life

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

• Use the Empirical library to create a basic cellular automaton
• Explain how discrete cellular automata can be used to study dynamics of life

Reading

There is a lot of reading here. Set yourself a 4 hour timer, start at the beginning and get as far as you can (with taking breaks and pausing the timer of course!). Make sure to take note of how far you got.

Read the following:

• 3.1 (Cellular Automata) of Biological Bits
• Using Data in C++ - has C++ and Python code and talks through the highlights of moving to C++ from Python
• Studying Artificial Life with Cellular Automata by Christopher G. Langton - This is dense, you don’t need to understand everything, focus on pulling out the high-level ideas of how Langton proposed using CAs and bring your questions to class to discuss! (Back up PDF just in case) I highly recommend you print this out and highlight it or highlight and make notes in a PDF reader and please bring your notes to class.
• Play Game of Life interactive website

If printing out any of the papers is a burden to you but you’d benefit from printed copies, please let me know. I’m happy to provide them.

Checks

Submit answers to the following on Moodle:

• How much of the reading were you able to get through in the four hours?
• What is the general idea of cellular automata and the Game of Life specifically?
• What is Langton’s argument about the value of synthezing life as opposed to analyzing it?
• Based on Langton’s arguments, how alive do you now think cellular automata can be and why?

(Note, answers to these questions could be entire essays, but you don’t need to write that much. A few paragraphs is a good amount, but the point isn’t the number of words, but to start getting your thoughts written out to fuel discussion in class. To that end, remember to bring your notes on the paper to class!)