5. Robots and artificial life

Abstract

Artificial life (A-Life) models biological systems. Like AI, it has both technological and scientific aims. ‘Robots and artificial life’ explains that A-Life is integral to AI, because all the intelligence we know about is found in living organisms. AI technologists turn to biology in developing practical applications of many kinds, including robots, evolutionary programming, and self-organizing devices. Robots are quintessential examples of AI, having high visibility and being hugely ingenious—and very big business, too. Evolutionary AI, although widely used, is less well known. Self-organizing machines are even less familiar. Nevertheless, in the quest to understand self-organization, AI has been as useful to biology as biology has been to AI.