AI and A-Life: Never Mind The Blocksworld

This paper discusses the relationship between Artiicial Intelligence (AI) and Ar-tiicial Life (A-Life). A-Life research addresses a wide range of phenomena, some of which have no obvious bearing on AI research. The work most relevant to AI is suuciently coherent and distinct that it is best referred to by its own name: it is Adaptive Behavior research which is most likely to have signiicant impact on issues traditionally studied in AI. Some motivations for adaptive behavior research are reviewed, and some of the diierences between adaptive behavior and traditional AI are discussed. One signiicant feature of current adaptive behavior research is a focus on relatively simple and specialised cognitive functions, an approach which invites unfavourable comparisons with the \blocksworld" simpliied domains which were popular in AI research of the early 1970's. However, such comparisons usually overlook fundamental diierences between the blocksworld-AI and Adaptive Behavior approaches to issues of simplicity and specialisation.