He had to rely on the busy schedules of Brooks and his busy grad students. How much better to learn while alive. That is the next big step for machines. To learn over time, on their own. To not only adapt, but evolve.
Evolution proceeds in steps.
Genghis is an insect-equivalent. Its descendants someday will be rodents, and someday further, as smart and nimble as apes. But we need to be a little patient in our quest for machine evolution, Brooks cautions. From day one of Genesis, it took billions of years for life to reach plant stage, and another billion and a half before fish appeared. A hundred million years later insects made the scene.