The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities
Authors: Lehman Joel , Clune Jeff , Misevic Dusan , Adami Christoph , Altenberg Lee , Beaulieu Julie , Bentley Peter J. , Bernard Samuel , Beslon Guillaume , Bryson David M. , Cheney Nick , Chrabaszcz Patryk , Cully Antoine , Doncieux Stephane , Dyer Fred C. , Ellefsen Kai Olav , Feldt Robert , Fischer Stephan , Forrest Stephanie , Fŕenoy Antoine , Gagńe Christian , Le Goff Leni , Grabowski Laura M. , Hodjat Babak , Hutter Frank , Keller Laurent , Knibbe Carole , Krcah Peter , Lenski Richard E. , Lipson Hod , MacCurdy Robert , Maestre Carlos , Miikkulainen Risto , Mitri Sara , Moriarty David E. , Mouret Jean-Baptiste , Nguyen Anh , Ofria Charles , Parizeau Marc , Parsons David , Pennock Robert T. , Punch William F. , Ray Thomas S. , Schoenauer Marc , Schulte Eric , Sims Karl , Stanley Kenneth O. , Taddei François , Tarapore Danesh , Thibault Simon , Watson Richard , Weimer Westley , Yosinski Jason 
Published: April 2020

Evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations that often surprise the scientists who discover them. However, the creativity of evolution is not limited to the natural world: Artificial organisms evolving in computational environments have also elicited surprise and wonder from the researchers studying them. The process of evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution can provide examples of how their evolving algorithms and organisms have creatively subverted their expectations or intentions, exposed unrecognized bugs in their code, produced unexpectedly adaptations, or engaged in behaviors and outcomes, uncannily convergent with ones found in nature. Such stories routinely reveal surprise and creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. Bugs are fixed, experiments are refocused, and one-off surprises are collapsed into a single data point. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This article is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems.