Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle
adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However,
because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in
which it occurs, evolution's creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many
researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving
algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized
bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes
uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal
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. 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 paper 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.

这篇论文讨论了在生物进化和数字进化中，算法过程不仅局限于其发生的基质，而且创造性地产生大量的复杂和微妙的适应性，这些未预料的结果足以证明进化的惊人创造力，这表明进化的惊人创造力超越了自然界，可能是所有复杂演化系统的普遍属性，为此作者提供了一份具有科学价值和娱乐价值的关于这些趣闻轶事的事实核查收集。

数码进化的惊人创造力：来自进化计算和人工生命研究社群的案例集

The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of  Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research  Communities

This chapter discusses the possibility of instilling a virtual world with
mechanisms for evolution and natural selection in order to generate rich
ecosystems of complex organisms in a process akin to biological evolution. Some
previous work in the area is described, and successes and failures are
discussed. The components of a more comprehensive framework for designing such
worlds are mapped out, including the design of the individual organisms, the
properties and dynamics of the environmental medium in which they are evolving,
and the representational relationship between organism and environment. Some of
the key issues discussed include how to allow organisms to evolve new
structures and functions with few restrictions, and how to create an
interconnectedness between organisms in order to generate drives for continuing
evolutionary activity.

本文讨论在虚拟世界中注入演化和自然选择机制，以生成复杂生物的丰富生态系统，包括设计个体生物、演化环境介质的特性和动态，以及个体与环境的表征关系。关键问题包括如何允许生物在少限制下演化新结构和功能，以及如何创造生物之间的相互联系以产生延续的进化活动。