Researchers are injecting noise in neural networks to provide variability that allows virtual organisms to adapt to new situations and come up with inventions.
Software engineers have developed an intrusion-detection program capable of recognizing attack patterns before hackers have even developed them.
Computer scientists have found the ultimate way to debug their programs --let them compete against other programs in a gladiator-style tournament.
The evolutionary path from simple microbe to complex forms, on Earth or anywhere in the universe, is long, gradual and very Darwinian, according to a new experiment conducted with an "alien form of life" in a virtual petri dish.
Computer programs designed to 'evolve' solutions to mathematical problems support the idea that complexity in nature emerges in small, often apparently unremarkable, steps. Complex biological organisms are thought to develop through a series of intermediary evolutionary adaptations, rather than in single giant evolutionary leaps.
A self-organising electronic circuit with evolutionary computer program to "breed" an oscillator circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. Researchers discovered that the evolving circuit had used the computer's circuit board itself as an antenna, picking up a signal from a nearby computer and delivering it as an output.
Virtual creatures, with muscles, senses and primitive nervous systems, have been "grown" from artificial embryos in a computer simulation. The multi-celled organisms could be the first step towards using artificial evolution to create intelligent life from scratch.