The surprising creativity of digital evolution: a collection of anecdotes from the evolutionary computation and artificial life research communities

Abstract

Evolution’s creative potential is not limited to the natural world. Researchers in digital evolution frequently encounter unexpected and surprising behaviors in their evolving algorithms and organisms, such as creative subversion of expectations, unexpected adaptations, and behaviors convergent with nature. These surprises often go unreported, treated as mere obstacles to overcome rather than significant results. This article serves as a collection of first-hand accounts from researchers in artificial life and evolutionary computation, showcasing these surprising phenomena and providing evidence that evolutionary creativity transcends the natural world, potentially a universal property of complex evolving systems.