In the 1990s, a new computational model called AlChemy promised to explain where we came from — why specific basic chemical compounds combine to form networks as complex as life. After generating initial enthusiasm, AlChemy languished on the SFI website. Researchers considered the model both too simplistic to apply real chemistry and biology, and too complicated to properly analyze.
A new paper revives the AlChemy model, reporting that it predicts stable complex organizations (like life) will emerge from basic parts more frequently than previously believed. The article appears in a special issue of Chaos, co-edited by SFI External Professor Elizabeth Bradley and celebrating Science Board Fellow David Campbell.
Senior author and SFI External Professor Stephanie Forrest worked with collaborators to run the original code on today’s more powerful computers. They confirmed consistent results and ran new tests shaped by the last three decades of complexity science.
AlChemy shows that stable complex organizations struggle to combine with each other, the authors find. The model could help automatically generate useful computer programs — a longstanding goal in computer science — and extend bio-inspired computing based on the chemical processes that led to life on Earth.
Read the paper “Self-organization in computation and chemistry: Return to AlChemy” in Chaos (September 30, 2024) at DOI: 10.1063/5.0207358.