797K views · Dec 6, 2008 · 4:10 · 2 HN recommenders · 8 mentions · discussed 2014–2022
Karl Sims's 1994 demonstration of evolved virtual creatures: block-bodied creatures whose bodies and controllers are evolved through selection, mutation and recombination to swim, walk and compete.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN treats it as the classic reference for evolutionary simulation and genetic programming, an inspiration for many projects, with notes on evolution exploiting simulation bugs.
“I remember being obsessed with that paper”HN comment, 2021
“Something like evolving virtual creatures would be a fun (although pretty ambitious) addition”
Karl Sims' evolved virtual creatures as an idea to add to a project.
Something like evolving virtual creatures would be a fun (although pretty ambitious) addition [1]. There's a processing 2D virutal creatures model called sticky feet [2] (source available) that perhaps could be ported to js pretty quickly. [1] this video [2] link
“I remember being obsessed with that paper”
Classic evolving virtual creatures work, an inspiring paper.
Also relevant is Karl Sims' Evolving Virtual Creatures: this video Not sure how they're connected, but I remember being obsessed with that paper and actually recreating it in 2D as a grad project.
“This is a classical application of genetic programming.”
Classic genetic programming creatures learning movement, used to explain a misunderstanding.
It seems to me that there are several levels of misunderstanding here. And the most interesting part is when Suzuki asks "So, what is your goal?", and the engineer answers "Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.". This is certainly a commendable goal. Then we cut to another sequence, where Miyazaki is drawing, and reflecting: "I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves..." It may or may not be so, but this is an interesting point to discuss. I can certainly understand how it could feel like it, but you'd have to study the motive for wanting to "replace" humans by machines, or just have machine perform like humans. One key misunderstanding in this exchange, and foremost on the part of the journalists reporting it (damn dumb journalists!), is that "This is a presentation of an artificial intelligence model which learned certain movements." Obviously, they didn't teach it to move, they had a certain model of the body, and let the AI loose, trying to learn by itself how to move. This is a classical application of genetic programming. See how some of those creatures look "creepy" too: this video link link link They obtained some creepy result, added a creepy texture and made it into a quick & dirty demo for "animating zombies". Clearly, the people who assisted to this demo didn't understand what it was. And the answer of the artist was the worst. Imagine assisting to Wright brothers' demo, and comi
“This is a classical application of genetic programming.”
Classic genetic programming creatures learning movement, used to explain a misunderstanding.
It seems to me that there are several levels of misunderstanding here. And the most interesting part is when Suzuki asks "So, what is your goal?", and the engineer answers "Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.". This is certainly a commendable goal. Then we cut to another sequence, where Miyazaki is drawing, and reflecting: "I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves..." It may or may not be so, but this is an interesting point to discuss. I can certainly understand how it could feel like it, but you'd have to study the motive for wanting to "replace" humans by machines, or just have machine perform like humans. One key misunderstanding in this exchange, and foremost on the part of the journalists reporting it (damn dumb journalists!), is that "This is a presentation of an artificial intelligence model which learned certain movements." Obviously, they didn't teach it to move, they had a certain model of the body, and let the AI loose, trying to learn by itself how to move. This is a classical application of genetic programming. See how some of those creatures look "creepy" too: this video link link link They obtained some creepy result, added a creepy texture and made it into a quick & dirty demo for "animating zombies". Clearly, the people who assisted to this demo didn't understand what it was. And the answer of the artist was the worst. Imagine assisting to Wright brothers' demo, and comi
“Karl Sims, which is the main source of inspiration behind my project”
Karl Sims' work as the main inspiration for the commenter's project.
I hadn't before, thanks for the tip! It's been a while since I played with this stuff, but I might have to get a copy and explore. I have heard of MetaSynth in audio circles. I'm not sure, but the images and videos on the ArtMatic site look (to me) very inspired and influenced by the work of Karl Sims, which is the main source of inspiration behind my project... link You can find a bunch of his videos on YouTube too. link link link this video
“He noted at the time that the evolution process was great at exploiting bugs in the simulation.”
Evolved creatures exploited simulation bugs.
The article's philosophical discussion of "surprise" feels a little klunky and academic to me, and I think conflates some different kinds of surprise, but it's still really fun to think about. Many of the projects here are all inspired by Karl Sims' work in the early 90's. link Sims evolved virtual creates by specifying goals to achieve and then running a physics simulation. He noted at the time that the evolution process was great at exploiting bugs in the simulation. this video I was insipred enough by Sims' genetic images ( link ) that I spent a few years trying to get surprising and beautiful results of my own, with some limited success ( link ).
“Also see Karl Sims 'Creatures' from the 90s”
Example of evolutionary optimization producing creatures.
I think evolution is not an undirected process in that sense because it's an optimization process, that optimizes to create more copies of itself. Superintelligence will likely use some Evolutionary Computation (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_computation ). Also see Karl Sims 'Creatures' from the 90s: this video or OpenAI's Multi-Agent Hide and Seek: youtube.com/watch?v=kopoLzvh5jY
“I think they just took a concept figured out in 1994”
I think they just took a concept figured out in 1994 ( this video ) and applied it to robots, in an attempt to get an easy publication written up. Really, though, we know we can make robot parts. The hard part is the software. What these people did by making it robotic was completely pointless (because making the robots is a huge amount of unnecessary added work) that doesn't add to our knowledge until we can solve all the software problems in simulations first.
