Fed with a basic prompt, the AI system was able to develop a blueprint for a rudimentary walking robot within seconds.
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:22 It actually starts from scratch.
00:24 And the way that it works is it generates this random body that kind of looks like a sponge.
00:29 And it evaluates its behavior.
00:32 It's probably not so good at walking or whatever you want this robot to do.
00:37 And then, thanks to a little neat mathematical trick, it can kind of see into the future
00:42 and tell how changes to the body will affect its behavior, make it better or worse.
00:48 So the AI starts changing the shape of the robot and repositioning muscles within its body
00:55 so that it becomes better and better at walking.
00:58 [MUSIC]
01:11 How can we learn about evolution?
01:13 We don't have a time machine.
01:15 We can't travel back in time to see what happened on our planet, to see how life emerged.
01:19 We don't have any means of interstellar travel.
01:22 We can't travel to other planets and observe other forms of life.
01:27 It's very difficult to do science in these conditions where you really only have a single data point,
01:32 life on Earth, and it's hard to look into that data point and see what happened over time.
01:38 Well, now anyone can watch evolution in action, and I'm hoping that this generates new ideas
01:44 and new hypotheses and leads eventually to new useful technologies.
01:49 [MUSIC]