Evolvable AI: are we on the brink of the next major evolutionary transition? |
What happens when natural selection, the most powerful process driving change in the living world, shapes artificial intelligence (AI), perhaps the most potent technology humanity has invented to date?
We might be about to find out.
According to a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we are entering the era of “evolvable AI” – AI systems that can undergo evolution. In turn, that might give rise to a major transition in evolution.
How major is “major”? Well, in nearly 4 billion years there have only been eight, or perhaps only seven, other major transitions. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
The ingredients for evolution
Evolution doesn’t require DNA, cells or even biological life. It just needs information that can replicate, and a source of variation that affects how successfully the information replicates.
When these conditions exist, evolution happens, whether anybody intended it to or not.
Modern AI systems already meet these conditions. Models can be copied. Their parameters, architectures and training data can vary. And some variants perform in ways that make them more likely to be reused, refined or deployed.
Evolution has long operated outside biology. It shapes languages, technologies and cultures. But AI introduces something different: systems that are both information-rich and can influence their own reproduction.
That combination raises the stakes dramatically.
Two scenarios for ‘evolvable AI’
The authors of the new paper recognise two broad AI evolution scenarios that could influence both how selection happens, and the kinds of........