Artificial Life

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Overview

Artificial life investigates how features such as self-organization, adaptation, reproduction, and agency arise in systems that need not be biological. Researchers build digital evolutionary worlds, cellular automata, agent-based ecologies, self-replicating programs, and physically grounded simulations, using methods from evolutionary computation, reinforcement learning, and dynamical-systems analysis. These settings help explore questions about the origins of life, cooperation, inheritance, and how simple rules can produce complex behavior. A central challenge is distinguishing sustained activity or apparent complexity from genuinely open-ended evolution, and determining when a system qualifies as autonomous or life-like.

Latest papers

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30 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, down 40% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Universal Construction and Exact Self-Reproduction in Ternary McCulloch-Pitts Networks

    Oct 8, 2026Charles C. NortonArtificial Life

  2. Inherited Learning in an Artificial Ecology: How Controls and Update Allocation Shape Benefits

    Oct 1, 2026Xuening Wu, Lei Li, Shan YuArtificial Life

    Pfizer, Shanghai, China · Independent Researcher

  3. Environmental requirements for the use of social information by artificial life agents using evolved plastic artificial neural networks

    Sep 28, 2026Hugh Charterton, James M. Borg, Aniko EkartArtificial Life

    Aston Centre for AI Research and Application, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

  4. Self-Replicating Neural Cellular Automata: Quantifying Emergent Phenotypic and Genotypic Diversity in an OpenEnded Substrate

    Sep 17, 2026Sanyam Jain, Felix Simon Reimers, Stefano NicheleNeural Cellular AutomataArtificial Life

    Department of Computer Science and Communication, Østfold University of Applied Sciences, B R A veien 4, 1757 Halden, Norway · Department of Computer Science, Oslo Metropolitan University, Pilestredet 35, 0166 Oslo, Norway

  5. Machine Zygote: Causal Biparental Heredity Before Learning in a Germline--Soma Artificial Agent

    Sep 15, 2026Lyes Saad SaoudArtificial LifeRobotics

    Independent Researcher Chicago, Illinois, USA; Abu Dhabi, UAE

  6. Multi-Behavioral Evolved Substrates Through Neuromodulation and Activation Selection

    Sep 10, 2026Romain Claret, Michael O'Neill, Paul Cotofrei +1NeuroevolutionArtificial Life

    University of Neuchˆatel, Switzerland · University College Dublin, Ireland

  7. Tapes Together Strong: The Co-evolution of Computation and Cooperation

    Sep 9, 2026Kunal Jha, Francesco Cicala, Blaise Agüera y Arcas +4Artificial LifeEvolutionary Game Theory

    Dept. of Computer Science, University of Washington. · Google Paradigms of Intelligence. · School of Computer Science, McGill University; Mila. +1

  8. Dalek: A Constructive Agent Machine

    Sep 3, 2026Wanpeng XieArtificial LifeSelf-Improving Agents

  9. Semantic Lenia: Emergence of Homeostatic Solitons within the Semantic Space of Large Language Models

    Aug 12, 2026Yoshihiko KayamaEmergent Abilities in Language ModelsLanguage Model Steering

    BAIKA Women’s University 2–19–5, Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan

  10. Neuroevolution Arena: Nested Ecological Evaluation of Update-and-Inheritance Regimes across Neural Architectures

    Aug 10, 2026Yuxu Ge, Yifei ChengReinforcement LearningArtificial Life

    University of York, United Kingdom

  11. CEDAR: Agent-Orchestrated Tree Search for Goal-Directed Optimization of Complex Systems

    Aug 7, 2026Yingtao TianLanguage Model-Guided Search HeuristicsArtificial Life

    Sakana AI, Tokyo, Japan

  12. Risk-Aware Decision Policies for Agents Under Noisy Perception

    Aug 5, 2026David SzczecinaArtificial LifeAgent-Based Modeling

    University of Waterloo, Canada

  13. Limbomorphs

    Jul 26, 2026Alex Alvarez, Michael LevinArtificial Life

    Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA · Allen Discovery Center, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA · Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA

  14. Genesis: An Empirical Platform for Studying Open-Ended Evolution Without Fitness Functions

    Jul 18, 2026Anushka SharmaOpen-Ended EvolutionArtificial Life

    Banasthali Vidyapith Vanasthali, Rajasthan, India

  15. Evolving Self-Organising Agents Without Fitness: Three Falsifiable Experiments from Constraint-Driven Selection to Developmental Encoding

    Jul 18, 2026Anushka SharmaOpen-Ended EvolutionArtificial Life

    Banasthali Vidyapith Vanasthali, Rajasthan, India

  16. Coevolution of self-replication and function in a digital primordial soup

    Jul 10, 2026Francesco Cicala, Eyvind Niklasson, Ettore Randazzo +8Artificial Life

    Google, Paradigms of Intelligence Team · HPC Lab, InGeo Department, “G. D’Annunzio” University Chieti-Pescara · Mila - Quebec AI Institute +2

  17. Life as Plasmas: Autonomy and Interactivism in-materio

    Jul 3, 2026Nicolás Hinrichs, Mahault Albarracin, Felipe Engelberger +2Artificial Life

    Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany · Eigenify, USA · Verses AI Research Lab / Universit´e du Qu´ebec `a Montr´eal, Canada +3

  18. Microcosmos: Reimagining Artificial Life for the GPU Era

    Jul 3, 2026Mark Tensen, Ciaran Regan, Bert Wang-Chak Chan +3Artificial LifeDifferentiable Physics

    1Artificial Life Institute, Japan · 2Sakana AI, Japan · University of Tsukuba, Japan +2

  19. BFF: Simple explanations for complex phenomena

    Jul 1, 2026Charlotte Knierim, Luca Versari, Robert Obryk +2Artificial LifeGenetic Programming

    Google, Paradigms of Intelligence Team

  20. Conversable Complexity: Agentic LLM Collectives as Interpretable Substrates

    Jul 1, 2026Elias Najarro, Ane Espeseth, Eleni Nisioti +2Artificial LifeLLM Interpretability

    IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark · University of Oslo, Norway · Sakana AI, Japan +1

  21. OpenLife: Toward Open-World Artificial Life with Autonomous LLM Agents

    Jun 30, 2026Atsushi Masumori, Itsuki Doi, Norihiro Maruyama +2Multi-Agent LLM SystemsArtificial Life

    1Alternative Machine Inc., Japan · 4The University of Tokyo, Japan · 3Atomi University, Japan

  22. Directing Open-Ended Evolution in Artificial Life via Multi-Scale Path Divergence

    Jun 12, 2026Mikhail Akhtyrchenko, Mikhail I. Katsnelson, Andrey UstyuzhaninOpen-Ended EvolutionArtificial Life

    1Constructor University, Bremen, Germany. · 2Constructor Knowledge Labs, Bremen, Germany. · Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands. +1

  23. Neutrally Evolving Interlocking Complexity in the Quandary Den

    Apr 20, 2026Andrew WalshArtificial Life

    1Independent Researcher, United States of America

  24. Evolving Many Worlds: Towards Open-Ended Discovery in Petri Dish NCA via Population-Based Training

    Apr 13, 2026Uljad Berdica, Jakob Foerster, Frank Hutter +1Neural Cellular AutomataOpen-Ended Evolution

    1FLAIR, University of Oxford · 2ELLIS Institute Tübingen · University of Freiburg +2

  25. Prosociality by Coupling, Not Mere Observation: Homeostatic Sharing in an Inspectable Recurrent Artificial Life Agent

    Apr 12, 2026Aishik SanyalArtificial LifeEmergent Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems

    Independent Research Engineer

  26. Conchordal: Emergent Harmony via Direct Cognitive Coupling in a Psychoacoustic Landscape

    Mar 26, 2026Koichi TakahashiMusic GenerationEmergent Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems

    Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University

  27. Evolving Symbiosis, from Barricelli's Legacy to Collective Intelligence: a simulated and conceptual approach

    Mar 9, 2026James Ashford, Marko Cvjetko, Richard Löffler +6Open-Ended EvolutionArtificial Life

    Independent Researcher, Oxford, UK · Inria Center at the University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France · University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark +4

  28. A speciation simulation that partly passes open-endedness tests

    Mar 2, 2026Théo de Pinho, Lana SinapayenOpen-Ended EvolutionArtificial Life

    University of Lille, France · Sony Computer Science Laboratories / National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan

  29. Survival Dynamics of Neural and Programmatic Policies in Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning

    Jan 7, 2026Anton Roupassov-Ruiz, Yiyang ZuoReinforcement LearningArtificial Life

    Department of Computing Science University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E8, Canada

  30. Illuminating the Three Dogmas of Reinforcement Learning under Evolutionary Light

    Jul 15, 2025Mani Hamidi, Terrence W. DeaconOpen-Ended EvolutionReinforcement Learning

    Department of Computer Science, University of Tübingen, Germany · Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, USA