Requirements for Open-Ended Evolution in Natural and Artificial Systems
This work addresses the problem of limited evolutionary dynamics in artificial systems for researchers in evolutionary computation and artificial life, but it is incremental as it synthesizes existing ideas into a framework.
The paper tackles the challenge of achieving open-ended evolution in artificial systems by proposing five fundamental requirements derived from biological literature, aiming to guide the design of systems with greater evolutionary potential.
Open-ended evolutionary dynamics remains an elusive goal for artificial evolutionary systems. Many ideas exist in the biological literature beyond the basic Darwinian requirements of variation, differential reproduction and inheritance. I argue that these ideas can be seen as aspects of five fundamental requirements for open-ended evolution: (1) robustly reproductive individuals, (2) a medium allowing the possible existence of a practically unlimited diversity of individuals and interactions, (3) individuals capable of producing more complex offspring, (4) mutational pathways to other viable individuals, and (5) drive for continued evolution. I briefly discuss implications of this view for the design of artificial systems with greater evolutionary potential.