Introduction To Artificial Life: Christoph Adami

Artificial Intelligence 130 (2001) 119–121
Book Review
Christoph Adami,
Introduction to Artificial Life ✩
Tim Taylor
International Centre for Computer Games and Virtual Entertainment, University of Abertay Dundee,
Dundee, DD1 1HG, Scotland, UK
Despite the popularity of artificial life over the last 15 years or so, as witnessed by
the establishment of several international conferences on the subject and the birth of
the Artificial Life Journal and similar publications, there has been a conspicuous lack
of decent introductory texts on the subject. Notable exceptions include “Artificial Life:
An Introduction” [3], an eclectic selection of papers covering a wide range of subjects
that fall under the “artificial life” umbrella, and “The Philosophy of Artificial Life” [1],
another collection of papers, this time dealing with the philosophical underpinnings and
implications of the subject. A handful of popular science books also introduce the subject,
Levy’s arguably still being the best [4], but someone looking for a textbook suitable for an
undergraduate or graduate course on artificial life may be disappointed.
Christoph Adami’s “Introduction to Artificial Life” is a welcome attempt to help fill this
gap. The text has grown out of lectures given to advanced undergraduate- and graduate-
level students in Computation and Neural Systems and in Physics at Caltech (USA) since
1995. The content will also be of value to professional researchers with an interest in the
analysis of artificial evolutionary systems.
The first point to note about the text is that, despite the title, it is emphatically
not a general introduction to the field of artificial life. Instead, it concentrates very
specifically on introducing statistical mechanical and information theoretic techniques for
analyzing evolutionary processes. In Chapter 1, Adami does give a brief introduction to
the broader field, including evolution and learning in physically modeled virtual creatures,
biologically inspired robotics, emergent behavior in multi-agent systems, in vitro evolution
of RNA molecules, and cellular automata.
The remainder of the book is largely devoted to the introduction of a battery of the-
oretical approaches from the physical sciences and a discussion of their application to
the analysis of evolutionary systems (both real and artificial). Subjects covered include
✩
Springer-Verlag, New York, 1998; 374 pages + CD-ROM. Price DM 118 (hardcover). ISBN 0-387-94646-2.
E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Taylor).
0004-3702/01/$ – see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 0 4 - 3 7 0 2 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 9 1 - 1
120 T. Taylor / Artificial Intelligence 130 (2001) 119–121
an introduction to Information Theory, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, infor-

mational definitions of complexity, self-organized criticality, percolation theory, fitness
landscapes, the propagation of information, and adaptive learning at the error threshold.
Background is assumed in fundamental methods of statistical physics, knowledge of basic
computer architecture and programming skills, as well as rudimentary knowledge of biol-
ogy. Many mathematical results are presented without derivation, although suggestions for
further reading are generally given in such cases.
Throughout the book, the analysis tools developed are, from time to time, applied
to Adami and colleagues’ avida system. The model, derived from Ray’s well-known
tierra [5], simulates the parallel execution and evolution of a population of self-replicating
computer programs. The design of avida is not discussed at length in the main text,
but rather in the appendix, where the system’s User Manual is reprinted. A CD ROM
is supplied with the book, which contains versions of avida for Windows 95, Windows
NT and Unix systems (but not Macintosh). The CD ROM also contains other supporting
material, such as source code for programs to demonstrate aspects of self-organized
criticality and percolation theory, as well as an HTML document containing links to
sources of further reading on many of the subjects discussed in the book. The latter is
a particularly good idea, although, perhaps inevitably, some of the links are now broken
(the book, together with the CD, was published in 1998).
While the work introduced is doubtlessly valuable and provides new insights into the
dynamics of populations of self-replicating strings, I found myself asking how it fits in
with the characterization of artificial life provided by Chris Langton (the man who was
largely responsible for rekindling interest in the field in the mid-1980s). Langton describes
artificial life as:
“[the study] of man-made systems that exhibit behaviors characteristic of natural living
systems. It complements the traditional biological sciences concerned with the analysis
of living organisms by attempting to synthesize life-like behaviors within computers and
other artificial media. By extending the empirical foundation upon which biology is based
beyond the carbon-chain life that has evolved on Earth, Artificial Life can contribute to
theoretical biology by locating life-as-we-know-it within the larger picture of life-as-it-
could-be” [2].
In other words, artificial life is distinguished from traditional theoretical biology by its
fundamentally synthetic, rather than analytic, approach. I believe that most people would
broadly accept this distinction. Although Introduction to Artificial Life describes occasional
experiments on avida, the emphasis of the book is clearly on the development of a variety
of analytical tools for understanding evolution (both natural and artificial). Of course, the
behavior of artificial life simulations needs to be analyzed just as carefully as any other kind
of scientific model, and Adami’s work represents a valuable and much-needed contribution
to such analysis. However, nearly all coverage of the design of avida is confined to the
appendix, and even here it is described with little discussion of the theory behind its design.
This I consider a great pity, as it is precisely in the process of designing and building
such systems that one is faced with a myriad of choices and design decisions, even the
smallest of which may turn out to radically alter the resulting behavior of the system. It
is in highlighting new questions about the design and construction of systems—questions
that simply do not arise when analyzing the behavior of a predefined, given system—that
T. Taylor / Artificial Intelligence 130 (2001) 119–121 121
artificial life perhaps has the greatest potential to complement the results of analytical
models and thereby contribute to a broader understanding of life.
When Adami does turn to more philosophical considerations of the nature of life, it
is clear that he regards information and computation as the critical issues. For example,
when discussing the self-replicating programs in tierra and avida, he suggests “because
of the remaining computational-universality of their virtual CPUs . . . we feel compelled
to speculate that such constructions constitute minimal living systems” (p. 58, original em-
phasis). To motivate the discussion of information theory, Adami asserts “the discovery of
the genetic code cemented the fact that information is the central pillar in any attempt to
understand life” (p. 59, original emphasis).
Despite an observation in Chapter 1 that “life seems to be a property of a collection of
components but not a property of the components themselves” (p. 4, original emphasis),
which suggests that the organization of organisms is a (or, some would argue, the) defining
feature of life, Adami does not expand upon this theme. Throughout the rest of the book
he seems happy to regard self-replicating strings (be they computer programs or biomole-
cules) as “minimal living systems”. This lack of consideration of organizational issues is
also reflected in the approach to modeling populations of organisms; much of the theory is
based on assumptions like the population comprises only a single species (e.g., Chapter 4),
or in other cases, that ecological interactions and coevolution between species are negli-
gible (e.g., Chapter 8). Of course, such assumptions are introduced to make the analysis
tractable, but I suspect that it is precisely in these questions of organization, both at the level
of the individual organism, and at the level of the ecosystem, that living systems may be
most appropriately distinguished from non-living. For example, the most interesting (most
lifelike?) results to arise from tierra concerned the emergence of ecological relationships,
such as parasitism, between the evolving programs [5]. Models and analyses that concen-
trate on individual self-replicators evolving in static environments will fail to elucidate the
important influences of such ecological interactions.
Notwithstanding the foregoing remarks, the analysis techniques introduced by Adami
are clearly relevant in certain situations. The book is interesting and informative, and rep-
resents a valuable contribution to the literature. It will be of great interest to any researcher
looking for new ways to analyze and interpret the behavior of an artificial evolutionary
system. My main gripe is with the title; for someone looking for an introductory text on ar-
tificial life in its full breadth, I would still recommend [3] and [1] as initial sources, perhaps
reading Adami’s more specific text on the analysis of evolutionary systems as a secondary
text, or progressing to it (if this is where one’s particular interests lie) at a later stage.
References
[1] M.A. Boden (Ed.), The Philosophy of Artificial Life, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.
[2] C.G. Langton, Artificial life, in: C.G. Langton (Ed.), Artificial Life, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences
of Complexity, Vol. VI, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1988, pp. 1–47.
[3] C.G. Langton (Ed.), Artificial Life: An Introduction, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995.
[4] S. Levy, Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology, Vintage Books, 1993.
[5] T.S. Ray, An approach to the synthesis of life, in: C.G. Langton, C. Taylor, J.D. Farmer, S. Rasmussen (Eds.),
Artificial Life II, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, CA, 1991, pp. 371–408.

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Artificial Intelligence 130 (2001) 119–121

an introduction to Information Theory, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, infor-

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