Virtual worlds have long been populated by creatures that interact, reproduce, compete, evolve and die. But by and large, they do so because their behavior is programmed by developers. These efforts can produce complex virtual ecosystems, but they're not quite the digital reflections of what happens in nature.

Life in the real world is "programmed" by DNA, but its form and behavior are determined by the random mutation of genetic code, not by the intentions of a developer. Computer scientists have always been intrigued by the prospect of creating "artificial life" — that is, digital genetic code that can sustain itself over generations and adapt to meet the demands of a virtual environment without human interference.

Gaming has been an incubator for this pursuit, and in 1996, artificial life jumped from the research lab to the personal computer with the release of Creatures, a simulator developed by Steve Grand. The attributes of his fictional life forms, dubbed "Norns," are governed by a digital representation of DNA and the interactions between genetic makeup (physical abilities, health, intelligence, etc.) and the game's environment. By breeding Norns with particular attributes, the player can improve his creatures' chances of survival in a hostile world and create extremely diverse virtual life forms. The game was a commercial and critical success, inspired a generation of armchair geneticists and spawned a number of sequels.

Fifteen years (and a few books and research fellowships) later, Grand has returned to the prospect of gaming as an outlet for A-life development and launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the new project. "I'm not talking about a computer game designed to simulate lifelike behavior," Grand writes in the project description. "I mean genuine artificial life. I mean virtual creatures constructed from complex networks of virtual brain cells and biochemical reactions and genes. They'll learn things for themselves and have their own thoughts."

In five days, he's already raised the lion's share of his funding goal (more than $22,000 of the proposed $27,000) thanks to dedicated fans of Creatures and artificial life enthusiasts eager for a stake in Grand's new brainchild.

Intrigued by the project, which at present has no ties to a game studio or publisher, we reached out to Grand to find out what he's working on, and why he turned to the crowd to make it a reality.

Q & A With Steve Grand, Artificial Life Developer

Does your new project build upon any of the logistics from Creatures, or are you starting from scratch? Will the final product be a more "advanced" version of your previous games or something else entirely?

I’m starting from scratch, except in the most general terms. I learned a huge amount from Creatures — what to do and what not to do — and I’ve spent 15 years thinking hard about the “what not to do” part. I was willing to defend the idea that my first creatures were really alive, but I knew they weren’t conscious. Asking myself why I was so sure about this has obsessed me ever since. It was immediately obvious to me that the answer lay with imagination. Norns don’t have an imagination, and yet our own imaginations are where we live – the virtual world we actually reside in. It may seem like we’re aware of the outside world but in reality we’re only aware of our own internal model of the outside world; it’s just that this usually keeps pace with reality. The ability to have a thought, or a hope, or an expectation, or even a fear, depends on the ability to see a reality that hasn’t actually happened yet. So how the brain might give rise to imagination is what has driven my thoughts, and the answers I’ve come up with are really fascinating, I think. So most of what I’ve been thinking about is brand new stuff, not just to computer games but new, period.

What's the difference between "artificial life" and "artificial intelligence?"

Defining these terms is really slippery, but I reckon my opinion must be right by definition, since I wrote the encyclopedia entry! Artificial life is the study of the nature of life itself, as distinct from life as we find it here on earth, and it tries to understand this through simulation, rather than just by studying nature. Artificial intelligence comes in two flavors, and the kind most people are exposed to has surprisingly little to do with actual intelligence; it’s really an advanced kind of automation. The other flavor — Strong AI — maintains that machines can be truly intelligent, but for the most part researchers don’t take much notice of biology at all. So I take “an artificial life approach to artificial intelligence.” I simulate biological components such as brain cells, enzymes and genes, and try to create whole artificial creatures, rather than code that behaves somewhat like one aspect of a brain but isn’t structured like a brain at all. AI is largely top-down, while A-life is decidedly bottom-up, so A-life-based intelligence is emergent.

If a digital life form can learn, adapt, evolve, die and reproduce, at what point is it safe — scientifically speaking — to drop the term "artificial?" Can we ever?

That’s a very profound philosophical question! I tried to address it in my first book but a single book can’t do it justice. When it comes down to it, though, “artificial” just means “made by Man;” it’s not the opposite of “real.” “Virtual” is not the opposite of “real” either, just the opposite of “physical.” This issue is becoming even more blurred now that people are starting to create physical artificial cells. One of the reasons I like to create artificial life is to make people think about these things — I think they’re really important.

Will the project ultimately be a game? A research tool? Both?

Both, but that’s not as boring as it sounds. After all, people play with their pet dogs and yet psychologists use dogs as research tools. From my perspective, it’s research, but I want the outcome to be a lot of fun. When I wrote Creatures I wanted people to feel rapport with their pets; I wanted them to care about them because they believed in them. I decided we’re far too good at detecting phony behavior for me to just fool people into thinking these creatures were alive, so I actually set out to make them alive. I didn’t want to fool people anyway. The same is true now. If people aren’t interested in the underlying biology then they don’t have to pay any attention to it. But I learned from Creatures that an awful lot of people are seriously interested in what life is and how it works, so I’m fully expecting them to get into the science, too.

Can you tell us a bit about the "scientific breakthrough" you mention on your Kickstarter page that inspired you to start this new project?

It’s really a matter of crystallizing thoughts. We know far more about the human brain than about any other organ of the body, and yet surprisingly we don’t understand what its basic principles of operation are. Plenty of people have theories, but sit them down in front of a blank sheet of paper and tell them to design a brain and it suddenly seems a lot harder.

So thinking about these things, for me at least, involves starting with vague metaphors and similes — hmm, you know, the brain is kind of a bit like a thingy — and then gradually trying to tighten those ideas into actual analogies. Then from there, the analogies inspire models and the models become programmable. Or they don’t, if you can’t get the thoughts to crystallize. I’ve had a set of basic ideas since 2002, and even wrote a book about them, but pinning it down into something I can actually code has been a pig. I got stuck for months on a problem about how a critical part of my artificial brain could learn a certain kind of mapping; a certain kind of coordinate transform. I tried everything I could think of without success. But then an answer just came to me out of the blue. Poof!

Beyond research value, what kind of practical applications do you see for life simulation software?

These general ideas are already infiltrating practical applications. Even the transmission in my car learns how I drive. In a former life, I used to talk about “putting the life back into technology.” Tractors that are more like horses used to be; traffic signals that hate causing gridlock; that sort of thing. But the most important “application,” to my mind, is how this stuff makes us think very differently about the world — not just about life, morality and the like, but also politics and social organizations. The world is in the process of shifting from top-down concepts to bottom-up ones, and it’s a very profound shift indeed.

Why turn to Kickstarter, and not a game publisher or private capital?

I’ve been through the normal channels before and frankly I’m scared of them now. Money men and focus groups are just not conducive to the way I work (and I’m not alone in this, but I won’t name names). The games industry is not really a great environment in which to do complex, innovative research, and academia is a lousy place to make entertainment products or indeed any products. For most of my life I’ve worked alone, and if I’m good at anything at all, that’s a major part of why. Kickstarter is like a dream come true for people like me. It started at a perfect time, just as funding for the Arts and creative endeavors is drying up. I was very nervous about launching a project. For one thing I don’t feel good about asking for money, and for another I was scared nobody would give me any! But so far things are working out fantastically. I’m not counting my chickens, but I’m getting quite hopeful.

Will the Kickstarter money go toward your living expenses while you program full-time or are there other costs associated with the project?

I’ve already bought most of what I need in terms of licenses, etc. so it’s mostly for living expenses. I’ve largely funded my own work for over a decade but the breakthroughs took longer than I’d hoped and I ran out of resources before I could commit it all to code. Without people’s support I can’t continue my work.

Are you collaborating with anyone on the project?

No, except in the sense that I’m sure large numbers of people will take what I make and run with it. It was the community that made Creatures, and I expect that to be true with this game too. This stuff is all so complex, and it’s active research, so I’m forever changing my mind about things that have knock-on effects throughout the code. I can’t even explain half the stuff that’s in my head. Not to a human, anyway; I’m better at explaining things to computers. So it’s very much a lone wolf kind of thing. It’s the way I’ve always worked and it suits my mindset. It allows me to think differently.

Creatures had an active community where players swapped and showed off their creations on message boards. Do you think social media will play an active role in the development of your new project?

Oh yes, I imagine so. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the Creatures community (which was huge) did all this long before Twitter and Facebook. It’ll be interesting to see how they use these new tools. I need to put some thought to that, so I’m glad you brought it up.

What other artificial life/intelligence projects are you keeping tabs on? What should we be excited about?

Oh, I’m the wrong person to ask. I try not to look. For one thing I don’t want my own thoughts to be polluted by other people’s, and for another there’s always a hundred people who claim to be doing exactly what I’m doing and it’s kind of depressing to know that. I became disillusioned with AI way back in the 1970s, so I pay more attention to what’s going on in neuroscience than AI. A lot of very exciting things are starting to happen there and people’s views of the brain are starting to change (in the right direction, [in my humble opinion]).

Is it possible that we are all just simulated life forms inhabiting a virtual world? If so, how much RAM is needed to run the universe without lag?

Heh! Yes, in a very profound way I’d say that is the truth. We are nothing but simulations. The entire universe is nothing but a simulation. But I don’t mean that in a Matrix-like way. No RAM — it’s massively parallel. No illusion either. Nor do I mean it in a philosophically idealistic way — the sort of way that Samuel Johnson stubbed his toe over. But there is a profound sense in which everything is “form” (information, if you must) and forms that exist inside a computer have as much right to be considered real as forms that exist in space. I developed these ideas while writing Creatures. Who’d have thought a bunch of stupid, furry computer pets would cause me such philosophical conundrums?

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