Botworld is a cellular automaton developed at MIRI as a concrete environment in which to study self-modifying agents embedded in their environment. (Contrast this with "classical" models of artificial intelligence where agents interact with the environment only via I/O channels.)
An extensive introduction to Botworld can be found in the Botworld technical report. The source code for Botworld can be found in the corresponding literate Haskell file.
Some examples may be found in the examples directory.
Setup
If you don't have Haskell (namely, cabal), the
Haskell platform is a good way to get it.
Once you have cabal installed, simply run cabal install in this directory
to install Botworld. You may then import the Botworld module in any Haskell
file.
To play around with Botworld, you can start by playing around with the
rudimentary example. Make sure you have ghci
installed, then load up the file with
ghci examples/Rudimentary.hs
Then simply run
main
to see a visualization of the example game.