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Quantum artificial life created on the cloud - Info

A scenario of artificial intelligence could see the emergence of circumstances in which models of simple organisms could be capable of experiencing the various phases of life in a controlled virtual environment. This is what has been designed by the QUTIS research group at the UPV/EHU's Department of Physical Chemistry, but the scenario is that of quantum computers: an artificial life protocol that encodes quantum behaviours belonging to living systems, such as self-replication, mutation, interaction between individuals, birth and death, and has been executed on an IBM ibmqx4 cloud quantum computer.

This is the first experimental realization on a quantum computer of a quantum algorithm of artificial life following Darwin's laws of evolution. The algorithm follows a protocol that the researchers refer to as biomimetic and which encodes quantum behaviours adapted to the same behaviours of living systems. Quantum biomimetics involves reproducing in quantum systems certain properties exclusive to living beings, and this research group had previously managed to imitate life, natural selection, learning and memory by means of quantum systems. This research aimed, as the authors themselves describe, "to design a set of quantum algorithms based on the imitation of biological processes, which take place in complex organisms, and transfer them to a quantum scale, so we were only trying to imitate the key aspects in these processes".

In the scenario of artificial life that they designed, a set of models of simple organisms are capable of accomplishing the most common phases of life in a controlled virtual environment, and have proven that microscopic quantum systems are able to encode quantum characteristics and biological behaviours that are normally associated with living systems and natural selection.

The models of organism designed were coined as units of quantum life, each one of which is made up of two qubits that act as genotype and phenotype, respectively, and where the genotype contains the information that describes the type of living unit, and this information is transmitted from generation to generation. By contrast, the phenotype, the characteristics displayed by individuals, are determined by genetic information as well as by the interaction of the individuals themselves with the environment.

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