Mass extinctions can speed up evolution - in robots, at least

It's hard to think of mass extinctions as positive events, with species and genetic material lost forever. But computer scientists have shown that mass extinctions such as the one that killed off the dinosaurs could actually speed up evolution, leading to useful new adaptations – in robots at least. They say the finding has implications for the development of artificially intelligent robots and may support some evolutionary biologists' views that extinction events actually promote lineages that have the biggest potential to evolve. 'Focused destruction can lead to surprising outcomes,' said Risto Miikkulainen, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. 'Sometimes you have to develop something that seems objectively worse in order to develop the tools you need to get better.'