8 ms·

Artificial LIfe ENvironment (ALIEN) is an artificial life simulation tool

170 points by Bluestein 2y ago

bun_terminator 2y ago
This is their youtube page, which might be a better demonstration of what this actually is: https://www.youtube.com/@alien-project https://www.youtube.com/@alien-project
- emmanueloga_ 2y ago
  Looks amazing in motion! Also, here's the homepage. [1] -- 1: https://alien-project.org/ https://alien-project.org/
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    With video names such as "Invasion of Paradise" who can resist? :)
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    It's very polished: "ALIEN is an artificial life simulation program that runs on a GPU. Its simulation code is written entirely in CUDA and highly optimized for large-scale real-time simulations of millions of bodies and particles (see the links for more information). This channels features real-time captures of simulations and technical demonstrations of the latest version."
- Bluestein 2y ago
  PS. Also, nota bene, as noted in the docs: "Warning: This documentation is out of date and does not describe the behavior of the latest major version 4, which implements a new model. An up-to-date documentation can be found in the program help."
tempodox 2y ago
Seems to be Nvidia only. Too bad.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  (They ain't worth 3T for no reason, unfortunately :)
dunefox 2y ago
I love projects such as this. Although I don't know how successful they're in actually getting new insights - artificial life was the reason I wanted to study informatics.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  I can totally see that. Emergence, emergent phenomena are fascinating.- (I am convinced that at some obscure intersection of emergence, network effects and machine learning, there lurk answers to many, fundamental questions ...
  - WanderPanda 2y ago
    Do you mean emergence and network effects IN machine learning? Otherwise I would be very curious how machine learning fits that list in your view
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Thanks for making me think a bit deeper :) After some review, no, I do not think I would alone use "in" in somehow, I guess, circunscribing the probable, positive effects that I meant of emergence and network effects to ML.- In a certain sense, I think there's something "fundamental", a primitive, to ML and Transformers and such "big-data" and information techniques such as they are being applied to AI, that puts them up there with emergent phenomena and network effects in terms of constituting (or manifesting, or following, or embodying ....) some very fundamental principles.- So, in a sense, I am more and more leaning towards thinking that (particularly when applied to AI and the search for AGI) "primitives" such as emergence (particularly) are somehow to be brought to bear ... PS. As an illustration, look into JEPA and other more "holistic" approaches to simulating or achieving the "I" in AI. Approaches that are made up of very complex systems interacting with each other (some of which are Transformers, or verbal) but not entirely ... Now, coming back to the "in", above ... ... could emergence and network effects have use in ML itself (as in, integrated or taken advantage of in these systems) and the answer would also be yes, I think.- That is to say, emergence, network effects, ML ... consciousness perhaps, and other "fundamentals" might constitute - both as parts of larger solutions and incorporated within each other - useful building blocks ... Along these lines, there are some interesting "intersections" that I am exploring: - Bio electric signaling. Turns out neurons are great, but they are not the end-all of biological electrical signaling - Proprioception in ML, AI (!), and, of course robotics. There's something about having a body or being "embodied" that has some bearing here I am sure ... - JEPA (I and V) an other approaches that are hitting the problem from a more "holistic"/complex approach, trying to imitate or use "higher order" systems working together We do live in interesting times :) (And, I do not mean this in the overloaded sense of the Chinese saying to one's enemies ...)
smusamashah 2y ago
Is there any similar life simulation system which shows replication evolving naturally? I remember looking into this project once and replication is one of the already built-in properties.
- munchler 2y ago
  Replication is a prerequisite for evolution, not a product of evolution. If you’re interested in how replication first arose, you want to study abiogenesis, not evolution. The tricky thing about abiogenesis, though, is that it only has to happen once, which makes it difficult to study/model scientifically.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > The tricky thing about abiogenesis, though, is that it only has to happen once, which makes it difficult to study/model scientifically. Excuse my ignorance ... ... difficult because - I assume - it only having to happen once leaves you with little examples of it happening to study?
    - munchler 2y ago
      Yes, it didn't leave any evidence behind, other than life itself, and it could have been essentially a fluke event.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        Thanks for taking the time.-
  - dudinax 2y ago
    You're implying there was a moment where there was nothing replicating, then there was a self replicator and life took off. That's not logically required, nor does it line up with reality. The replicators that live today are not self-replicators. DNA can't replicate itself and the chemicals that replicate DNA cannot replicate themselves. It's a complex soup that collectively replicates. It's highly likely that the "first replicator" from which we are all descended was surrounded by and descended from other entities which we'd be hard pressed to prove weren't replicators if we had the chance to study them, but definitely evolved in some way.
eggy 2y ago
I still have the two Artificial Life volumes from the Santa Fe Institiute proceedings from 1989. Alien Life looks like you could easily get lost in another world with this simulation. I remember awaiting the game Spore with music by Brian Eno was being created with lots of pre-release press in 2007 / 2008. A lot of cross- disciplined talents were hovering around this field back then and emergent behavior was diffusing into all topics of conversation. Good times.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > Alien Life looks like you could easily get lost in another world with this simulation. I remember awaiting the game Spore ... I remember the (deserved) hype back then ...
- colordrops 2y ago
  Seems that Spore still has some life. My 12yo asked if he could get it on Steam, and loves playing it. No idea where he heard about it.
  - Rhapso 2y ago
    Nobody has made a game quite like it since. Its also really 5 games glued together with different levels of quality. Lots of replay value.
    - pennomi 2y ago
      The creature builder was lovely, but everything else ended up really shallow. I’m honestly shocked no one has redone Spore, but with more modern game design polish.
      - acureau 2y ago
        I've thought the same for some time now, it would do very well I think. The balance between the stages in Spore was way off. You could get all the way to space in like 4 hours, but I never could beat the final stage.
genewitch 2y ago
Someone needs to release the source code for telepathic-Critterdrug. Because that was awesome and i want to uncouple the simulation from the television part. Maybe the author reads HN and will remember me asking for this in the IRC chatroom.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Repo ... - https://code.google.com/archive/p/telepathic-critterdrug/source https://code.google.com/archive/p/telepathic-critterdrug/sou... ... appears empty.-
  - genewitch 2y ago
    it was an inspired "fork" of Critterding, which was an a-life sim in a simple 3d plane with walls, you'd decide how many green foods to put in or whatever and the little things would evolve to get more food or whatever. boring? Telepathic critterdrug took that premise and added "drugs" to the list of "green food," and added a common pixel-art sliding window that had an arbitrary number of "Frames" that could be moved in the x and y axis or "flipped" by incrementing or decrementing the frame numbers. The critters did all of that "telepathically", including drawing pixels, erasing pixels, and voting on whether to move the frame, etc. I'm not doing it justice, and i lost my creature files that made, "good", "elective susbtrate" videos. by participating in the collective hallucination, the critters could receive the equivalent of food as energy, so you could have a subset of critters that evolve to be "artists" and don't compete for the green food on the overworld map. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0c7nVitl7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0c7nVitl7k this isn't a good representation, but it's the only one i have that survived.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Shame the rest were not somehow saved :)
buffington 2y ago
The folks behind ALIEN might want to re-consider their choice of logo. It's nearly identical to Flickr's logo (flickr.com).

170 points by Bluestein 2y ago

This is their youtube page, which might be a better demonstration of what this actually is: https://www.youtube.com/@alien-project https://www.youtube.com/@alien-project

emmanueloga_ 2y ago
Looks amazing in motion! Also, here's the homepage. [1] -- 1: https://alien-project.org/ https://alien-project.org/
- Bluestein 2y ago
  With video names such as "Invasion of Paradise" who can resist? :)
- Bluestein 2y ago
  It's very polished: "ALIEN is an artificial life simulation program that runs on a GPU. Its simulation code is written entirely in CUDA and highly optimized for large-scale real-time simulations of millions of bodies and particles (see the links for more information). This channels features real-time captures of simulations and technical demonstrations of the latest version."
Bluestein 2y ago
PS. Also, nota bene, as noted in the docs: "Warning: This documentation is out of date and does not describe the behavior of the latest major version 4, which implements a new model. An up-to-date documentation can be found in the program help."

tempodox 2y ago

Seems to be Nvidia only. Too bad.

Bluestein 2y ago
(They ain't worth 3T for no reason, unfortunately :)

dunefox 2y ago

I love projects such as this. Although I don't know how successful they're in actually getting new insights - artificial life was the reason I wanted to study informatics.

Bluestein 2y ago
I can totally see that. Emergence, emergent phenomena are fascinating.- (I am convinced that at some obscure intersection of emergence, network effects and machine learning, there lurk answers to many, fundamental questions ...
- WanderPanda 2y ago
  Do you mean emergence and network effects IN machine learning? Otherwise I would be very curious how machine learning fits that list in your view
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Thanks for making me think a bit deeper :) After some review, no, I do not think I would alone use "in" in somehow, I guess, circunscribing the probable, positive effects that I meant of emergence and network effects to ML.- In a certain sense, I think there's something "fundamental", a primitive, to ML and Transformers and such "big-data" and information techniques such as they are being applied to AI, that puts them up there with emergent phenomena and network effects in terms of constituting (or manifesting, or following, or embodying ....) some very fundamental principles.- So, in a sense, I am more and more leaning towards thinking that (particularly when applied to AI and the search for AGI) "primitives" such as emergence (particularly) are somehow to be brought to bear ... PS. As an illustration, look into JEPA and other more "holistic" approaches to simulating or achieving the "I" in AI. Approaches that are made up of very complex systems interacting with each other (some of which are Transformers, or verbal) but not entirely ... Now, coming back to the "in", above ... ... could emergence and network effects have use in ML itself (as in, integrated or taken advantage of in these systems) and the answer would also be yes, I think.- That is to say, emergence, network effects, ML ... consciousness perhaps, and other "fundamentals" might constitute - both as parts of larger solutions and incorporated within each other - useful building blocks ... Along these lines, there are some interesting "intersections" that I am exploring: - Bio electric signaling. Turns out neurons are great, but they are not the end-all of biological electrical signaling - Proprioception in ML, AI (!), and, of course robotics. There's something about having a body or being "embodied" that has some bearing here I am sure ... - JEPA (I and V) an other approaches that are hitting the problem from a more "holistic"/complex approach, trying to imitate or use "higher order" systems working together We do live in interesting times :) (And, I do not mean this in the overloaded sense of the Chinese saying to one's enemies ...)

smusamashah 2y ago

Is there any similar life simulation system which shows replication evolving naturally? I remember looking into this project once and replication is one of the already built-in properties.

munchler 2y ago
Replication is a prerequisite for evolution, not a product of evolution. If you’re interested in how replication first arose, you want to study abiogenesis, not evolution. The tricky thing about abiogenesis, though, is that it only has to happen once, which makes it difficult to study/model scientifically.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > The tricky thing about abiogenesis, though, is that it only has to happen once, which makes it difficult to study/model scientifically. Excuse my ignorance ... ... difficult because - I assume - it only having to happen once leaves you with little examples of it happening to study?
  - munchler 2y ago
    Yes, it didn't leave any evidence behind, other than life itself, and it could have been essentially a fluke event.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      Thanks for taking the time.-
- dudinax 2y ago
  You're implying there was a moment where there was nothing replicating, then there was a self replicator and life took off. That's not logically required, nor does it line up with reality. The replicators that live today are not self-replicators. DNA can't replicate itself and the chemicals that replicate DNA cannot replicate themselves. It's a complex soup that collectively replicates. It's highly likely that the "first replicator" from which we are all descended was surrounded by and descended from other entities which we'd be hard pressed to prove weren't replicators if we had the chance to study them, but definitely evolved in some way.

eggy 2y ago

I still have the two Artificial Life volumes from the Santa Fe Institiute proceedings from 1989. Alien Life looks like you could easily get lost in another world with this simulation. I remember awaiting the game Spore with music by Brian Eno was being created with lots of pre-release press in 2007 / 2008. A lot of cross- disciplined talents were hovering around this field back then and emergent behavior was diffusing into all topics of conversation. Good times.

Bluestein 2y ago
> Alien Life looks like you could easily get lost in another world with this simulation. I remember awaiting the game Spore ... I remember the (deserved) hype back then ...
colordrops 2y ago
Seems that Spore still has some life. My 12yo asked if he could get it on Steam, and loves playing it. No idea where he heard about it.
- Rhapso 2y ago
  Nobody has made a game quite like it since. Its also really 5 games glued together with different levels of quality. Lots of replay value.
  - pennomi 2y ago
    The creature builder was lovely, but everything else ended up really shallow. I’m honestly shocked no one has redone Spore, but with more modern game design polish.
    - acureau 2y ago
      I've thought the same for some time now, it would do very well I think. The balance between the stages in Spore was way off. You could get all the way to space in like 4 hours, but I never could beat the final stage.

genewitch 2y ago

Someone needs to release the source code for telepathic-Critterdrug. Because that was awesome and i want to uncouple the simulation from the television part. Maybe the author reads HN and will remember me asking for this in the IRC chatroom.

Bluestein 2y ago
Repo ... - https://code.google.com/archive/p/telepathic-critterdrug/source https://code.google.com/archive/p/telepathic-critterdrug/sou... ... appears empty.-
- genewitch 2y ago
  it was an inspired "fork" of Critterding, which was an a-life sim in a simple 3d plane with walls, you'd decide how many green foods to put in or whatever and the little things would evolve to get more food or whatever. boring? Telepathic critterdrug took that premise and added "drugs" to the list of "green food," and added a common pixel-art sliding window that had an arbitrary number of "Frames" that could be moved in the x and y axis or "flipped" by incrementing or decrementing the frame numbers. The critters did all of that "telepathically", including drawing pixels, erasing pixels, and voting on whether to move the frame, etc. I'm not doing it justice, and i lost my creature files that made, "good", "elective susbtrate" videos. by participating in the collective hallucination, the critters could receive the equivalent of food as energy, so you could have a subset of critters that evolve to be "artists" and don't compete for the green food on the overworld map. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0c7nVitl7k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0c7nVitl7k this isn't a good representation, but it's the only one i have that survived.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    Shame the rest were not somehow saved :)

buffington 2y ago

The folks behind ALIEN might want to re-consider their choice of logo. It's nearly identical to Flickr's logo (flickr.com).