Growing Neural Cellular Automata

The Game of Life on steroids! This model learns to grow complex patterns in an entirely local way. Each cell is trained to listen to its neighbors and update itself in a way such that, collectively, an overall goal is reached. Fascinating and interactive!

https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

Abstract:
Most multicellular organisms begin their life as a single egg cell - a single cell whose progeny reliably self-assemble into highly complex anatomies with many organs and tissues in precisely the same arrangement each time. The ability to build their own bodies is probably the most fundamental skill every living creature possesses. Morphogenesis (the process of an organism’s shape development) is one of the most striking examples of a phenomenon called self-organisation. Cells, the tiny building blocks of bodies, communicate with their neighbors to decide the shape of organs and body plans, where to grow each organ, how to interconnect them, and when to eventually stop. Understanding the interplay of the emergence of complex outcomes from simple rules and homeostatic 1 feedback loops is an active area of research. What is clear is that evolution has learned to exploit the laws of physics and computation to implement the highly robust morphogenetic software that runs on genome-encoded cellular hardware.

This process is extremely robust to perturbations. Even when the organism is fully developed, some species still have the capability to repair damage - a process known as regeneration. Some creatures, such as salamanders, can fully regenerate vital organs, limbs, eyes, or even parts of the brain! Morphogenesis is a surprisingly adaptive process. Sometimes even a very atypical development process can result in a viable organism - for example, when an early mammalian embryo is cut in two, each half will form a complete individual - monozygotic twins!

The biggest puzzle in this field is the question of how the cell..