A Spontaneously Emerging Intelligence in a Toroidal Artificial World

Intelligent operating mechanisms have so far emerged spontaneously in biology. At the beginning of life on Earth, completely ignorant beings gradually became able to understand their environment by building a knowledge base from their own experiences. In this paper, we attempt to outline the above process by observing the operation of artificial beings in an artificial world. The shape of this experimental world is a torus where squared fields are on the surface. The size can be changed, and any number of beings can be launched into it. There are energy sources and energy sinks in it. The creatures require energy and thus step from field to field to get energy. At the beginning of the process, beings are ignorant. They have no experience, but remember everything that happened to them. During the simulation, we observe the progress, destruction, or rise of the creatures. We examined their knowledge base, and the boom, or extinction of groups, families, and clans. In a completely hostile world, it is impossible to survive, but in a slightly hostile or friendly world, viable populations will certainly develop, that can use their knowledge base to assert themselves. The intelligence appears always if the circumstances are not too hostile and the existing entities can remember events that happened to them. The spontaneous emergence of intelligence is not exceptional, but natural.