  Can reproduction alone in the context of survival produce intelligence in our
machines? In this work, self-replication is explored as a mechanism for the
emergence of intelligent behavior in modern learning environments. By focusing
purely on survival, while undergoing natural selection, evolved organisms are
shown to produce meaningful, complex, and intelligent behavior, demonstrating
creative solutions to challenging problems without any notion of reward or
objectives. Atari and robotic learning environments are re-defined in terms of
natural selection, and the behavior which emerged in self-replicating organisms
during these experiments is described in detail.
