Tl;dr:

Evolution is an untargeted stochastic process rather than focusing on goals like replication or survival.
It is not only applicable to living things, but also takes place across all sorts of concepts.
The way we design AI doesn't mimic evolution, which is worrisome.

Once in a while, I come across a text that goes something like this:

“Although evolution optimized them for the sole goal of replication, many spend
much of their time not producing offspring but on activities such as sleeping, pursuing food, building homes, asserting dominance and fighting or helping others — sometimes even to an extent that reduces replication.”

– excerpt from an anonymous NYT bestseller book about the future of AI

And once in a while, I find myself cringing a bit inside when I read this. Most of us (who are not living in conservative or religious communities) have learned about evolution at school, but many of us — even highly educated and intelligent people — get this detail wrong about evolution:

Evolution does not have a goal.

Evolution does not aim to improve replication, to increase fitness, or even to keep its subjects alive.

But wait, isn't this what Evolution is all about?
Not quite, there is a tiny distinciton - at its core, evolution simply describes a stochastic process with a few basic ingredients:

Stuff that is better at replicating will replicate more and will thus be around more.
Stuff that is better at not breaking — or avoiding being broken — will break later and will thus be around more.
Stuff that is easier to make will be made more and will thus be around more.

Evolution doesn’t care. It’s just statistics — pure mathematics.

Let’s say we have three starting populations with apparently similar growth rates observed over a timespan n:

$a * 1^{n}$ vs. $b * {1.001}^{n}$ vs. $c * {1.0011}^{n}$

No matter how large the population of a is, it won’t grow, since its growth rate is 1 — it just stays the same. If we wait long enough, b and c will necessarily outgrow a. And even though b and c differ in growth rate by only 0.01%, over enough time c will absolutely dominate b. This is the nature of exponential growth, even the tiniest edge compounds and will be around more. (Note that this is highly simplified for actual evolutionary processes). We don't need a GOAL here of growt...

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