h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great article - there seem to be a number of people interested in this kind of thing...

I can recommend two books to anyone who wishes to read up further (without getting too deeply involved with the technical stuff):

Artificial Intelligence, by Seven Levy. A superb book, covering the history of the discipline and raising many profound and insightful issues. An excellent and far-reaching introduction to the topic.

Darwin Amongst the Machines, by George Dyson. A very interesting look at how some of the characteristics of many of the lifeforms on this planet (particularly plants and viruses) can be replicated in silico.

I can also recommend some software from Cyberlife (http://www.cyberlife.co.uk) called Creatures, which creates very complex genetic-based learning organisms on your computer which can exhibit just about all of the general characteristics of life. They have a nice cuddly interface, of course, and they won't run roit and wipe your disk - don't worry! It's a bit like a fully-featured Tamagotchi. Many people can't bring themselves to actually switch off their computers after a while, even if they save to disk first...

Thanks for the books... I already heard about Levy, but now I've got more to look into. I need that!

Creatures is fun, isn't it? I only found it to give a lot of problems on my machine, and I seem to be a very bad parent to them as well.
Got both versions of it, with similar results.

I think the secret is sufficient reward and punishment.

A friend of mine thought (just for the sake of psychological advancement, you understand) that he'd try to replicate the symptoms and syndromes of schizophrenia in a Norn. As soon as it was born, he petted it and slapped it at seemingly random points, but always making sure that if he praised it for doing something good, the next time it did it, it would get a slap, and then get petted, etc.

He was a pretty cruel guy generally, I think, but something seems hilarious about what he was doing - I think it's the realisation that you'd never ever do that to a child or a pet, but you get the chance to in Creatures. Whether you get a conscience about it is another matter...!

Needless to say, the Norn grew up to be a mess, and opened a chain of Happy Eaters on the M25.

Poor misserable creatures