Overview

Our final new topic of the term is the biggest one: how is it that nature is continuously producing such novel and interesting creatures?? This idea is term “open-ended evolution” and is considered one of the “grand challenges” of artificial life. Today, we’ll discuss how I and colleagues have proposed tackling it!

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

  • Define open-ended evolution in the context of nature and artificial life broadly
  • Explain the high-level ideas behind the MODES metrics

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

  • Explain the approach of the MODES metrics more in depth

Resources

You should read the following:

Checks

Submit answers to the following on Moodle:

  • Pick one of the systems we’ve read about/studied/etc so far and how you know it’s not capable of open-ended evolution based on the MODES metrics (or perhaps the one you select is, feel free to argue that as well!).