# Moment of RPG Inspiration: ALife, Tierra, and the Bibites tags: #thoughts/moment-of-inspiration Your Moment of RPG Inspiration:  I know that large language models are all the rage right now, but I have to remind you that artificial intelligence as a field has long existed before the current moment. You guys are late to the party. Not only have we had [neural networks](https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/neural-networks) for quite a while, we've had [genetic programming](https://deap.readthedocs.io/en/master/tutorials/advanced/gp.html), [symbolic AI](https://www.datacamp.com/blog/what-is-symbolic-ai), and a whole bunch of other techniques which run almost every industrial process that goes into everything in life you consider good. All those people bitching about AI we've heard the same complaints forever. Hell, the routing algorithms that let you move murdered electrons from place to place in order to waste your and my time bitching about AI on social media — yeah, those things are classically AI. One of my favorite things since I was in high school has been artificial life, and the study thereof has been pretty awesome on every level. Everything back to the original [ALife](https://alife.org) simulation **[Tierra](https://tomray.me/tierra/)** all the way up to **[The Bibites](https://www.thebibites.com/?v=0b3b97fa6688)**. ![[The Bibites - Biology Panel.png]] Thinking about the possibilities of artificial life, genetic programming, and environmental simulations in your RPG, is there an entire synthetic ecology of micro and macro golems in your fantasy world? Does the digital wasteland have its own data scavengers and evolving populations which act as both threats and beasts of burden to your hackers? The possibilities are vast; use them.