Virtual Organisms

British Telecom are teaching small packets of software to have sex...Telephone traffic is so huge that it can't be run by a single program, so BT are experimenting with various small `ant' programs which are autonomous and can breed and evolve better offspring by trial, error, and natural selection. The most efficient number of sexes is three, they have discovered.Meanwhile, harmless artificial life forms are already loose on the internet; computer viruses and even robots are now able to evolve randomly like their biological counterparts. Protein-based computers are on the agenda: a team in Japan aim to build an organic brain as clever as a puppy within the next year. The convergence of technology with biology has big implications. Artificial life today is evolving even beyond its designers' control.Virtual Organisms is a fascinating tour d'horizon of who is developing what artificial life around the world today. Mark Ward has interviewed the leading reserachers and developers of artificial life and has some scary predictions for the directions in which they are taking us.