aiweirdness.com/post/172894792…
Original paper:
arxiv.org/pdf/1803.03453…
![Why walk when you can flop? In one example, a simulated robot was supposed to evolve to travel as quickly as possible. But rather than evolve legs, it simply assembled itself into a tall tower, then fell over. Some of these robots even learned to turn their falling motion into a somersault, adding extra distance.<br />
<br />
<br />
[Image: Robot is simply a tower that falls over.]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Daq-7wBU8AUlmLK.jpg)
![Image: Tall robot flinging a leg into the air instead of jumping](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Daq_YhBV4AA8NRh.jpg)
![Floating-point rounding errors as an energy source: In one simulation, robots learned that small rounding errors in the math that calculated forces meant that they got a tiny bit of extra energy with motion. They learned to twitch rapidly, generating lots of free energy that they could harness. The programmer noticed the problem when the robots started swimming extraordinarily fast.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Daq_oiVUQAAXC2U.jpg)
![Harvesting energy from crashing into the floor: Another simulation had some problems with its collision detection math that robots learned to use. If they managed to glitch themselves into the floor (they first learned to manipulate time to make this possible), the collision detection would realize they weren’t supposed to be in the floor and would shoot them upward. The robots learned to vibrate rapidly against the](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Daq_9cvU0AAp1Fo.jpg)
![Clap to fly: In another simulation, jumping bots learned to harness a different collision-detection bug that would propel them high into the air every time they crashed two of their own body parts together. Commercial flight would look a lot different if this worked in real life.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DarAVT3UMAYNy9R.jpg)
![Discovering secret moves: Computer game-playing algorithms are really good at discovering the kind of Matrix glitches that humans usually learn to exploit for speed-running. An algorithm playing the old Atari game Q*bert discovered a previously-unknown bug where it could perform a very specific series of moves at the end of one level and instead of moving to the next level, all the platforms would begin blinking rapi](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DarAuYNVAAA8AOF.jpg)
Delightfully, you can play the dream version: worldmodels.github.io
![Shooting the moon: In one of the more chilling examples, there was an algorithm that was supposed to figure out how to apply a minimum force to a plane landing on an aircraft carrier. Instead, it discovered that if it applied a *huge* force, it would overflow the program’s memory and would register instead as a very *small* force. The pilot would die but, hey, perfect score.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DarMewpU8AA2XaY.jpg)
![How to win at tic-tac-toe: In another beautiful example, in 1997 some programmers built algorithms that could play tic-tac-toe remotely against each other on an infinitely large board. One programmer, rather than designing their algorithm’s strategy, let it evolve its own approach. Surprisingly, the algorithm suddenly began winning all its games. It turned out that the algorithm’s strategy was to place its move very,](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DarR2nTU0AE16Hm.jpg)
vkrakovna.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/spe…
Rather than evolve its own good solutions, an algorithm found the best items from the pool of existing solutions and edited itself into their authorship slots
aliciapatterson.org/stories/eurisk…
![In an artificial life simulation where survival required energy but giving birth had no energy cost, one species evolved a sedentary lifestyle that consisted mostly of mating in order to produce new children which could be eaten (or used as mates to produce more edible children).](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dawvaf-UQAAXrFq.jpg)