Simulated Evolution

At a certain point of complexity, machines become intractable to engineer using traditional engineering methods. One way to continue the advancement of technology is via simulated evolution.

In Simulated Evolution, a virtual high-fidelity environment with accelerated virtual time is populated with Seed Organisms, which can be either newly-designed simple organisms or translations of existing organisms into the virtual environment. Colloquially, such environments are referred to as Simspace.

After enough simulated time, the resulting organisms will evolve and speciate. By controlling the evolution of the simulated environment, the resulting virtual species will be tuned for survival in conditions of the simulation designers' choosing. If a Simspace is close enough to the Physics in which it was built, extremely advanced nano-biotechnology can be employed to translate the simulated organism into the simulation's containing Physics. At this point, the organism will be able to live and reproduce as if it had evolved within the containing Physics itself.

Examples

The original example Simulated Evolution is the Ikoska, the first known machines with human-level intelligence.