Exploring Flow-Lenia Universes with a Curiosity-driven AI Scientist: Discovering Diverse Ecosystem Dynamics

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Hauptverfasser: Michel, Thomas, Cvjetko, Marko, Hamon, Gautier, Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves, Moulin-Frier, Clément
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Michel, Thomas
Cvjetko, Marko
Hamon, Gautier
Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves
Moulin-Frier, Clément
author_facet Michel, Thomas
Cvjetko, Marko
Hamon, Gautier
Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves
Moulin-Frier, Clément
contents We present a method for the automated discovery of system-level dynamics in Flow-Lenia--a continuous cellular automaton (CA) with mass conservation and parameter localization-using a curiosity--driven AI scientist. This method aims to uncover processes leading to self-organization of evolutionary and ecosystemic dynamics in CAs. We build on previous work which uses diversity search algorithms in Lenia to find self-organized individual patterns, and extend it to large environments that support distinct interacting patterns. We adapt Intrinsically Motivated Goal Exploration Processes (IMGEPs) to drive exploration of diverse Flow-Lenia environments using simulation-wide metrics, such as evolutionary activity, compression-based complexity, and multi-scale entropy. We test our method in two experiments, showcasing its ability to illuminate significantly more diverse dynamics compared to random search. We show qualitative results illustrating how ecosystemic simulations enable self-organization of complex collective behaviors not captured by previous individual pattern search and analysis. We complement automated discovery with an interactive exploration tool, creating an effective human-AI collaborative workflow for scientific investigation. Though demonstrated specifically with Flow-Lenia, this methodology provides a framework potentially applicable to other parameterizable complex systems where understanding emergent collective properties is of interest.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_15998
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploring Flow-Lenia Universes with a Curiosity-driven AI Scientist: Discovering Diverse Ecosystem Dynamics
Michel, Thomas
Cvjetko, Marko
Hamon, Gautier
Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves
Moulin-Frier, Clément
Artificial Intelligence
We present a method for the automated discovery of system-level dynamics in Flow-Lenia--a continuous cellular automaton (CA) with mass conservation and parameter localization-using a curiosity--driven AI scientist. This method aims to uncover processes leading to self-organization of evolutionary and ecosystemic dynamics in CAs. We build on previous work which uses diversity search algorithms in Lenia to find self-organized individual patterns, and extend it to large environments that support distinct interacting patterns. We adapt Intrinsically Motivated Goal Exploration Processes (IMGEPs) to drive exploration of diverse Flow-Lenia environments using simulation-wide metrics, such as evolutionary activity, compression-based complexity, and multi-scale entropy. We test our method in two experiments, showcasing its ability to illuminate significantly more diverse dynamics compared to random search. We show qualitative results illustrating how ecosystemic simulations enable self-organization of complex collective behaviors not captured by previous individual pattern search and analysis. We complement automated discovery with an interactive exploration tool, creating an effective human-AI collaborative workflow for scientific investigation. Though demonstrated specifically with Flow-Lenia, this methodology provides a framework potentially applicable to other parameterizable complex systems where understanding emergent collective properties is of interest.
title Exploring Flow-Lenia Universes with a Curiosity-driven AI Scientist: Discovering Diverse Ecosystem Dynamics
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15998