The biosphere computes evolution by autoencoding interacting organisms into species and decoding species into ecosystems.

Autoencoding is a machine-learning technique for extracting a compact representation of the essential features of input data; this representation then enables a variety of applications that rely on encoding and subsequent reconstruction based on decoding of the relevant data. Here, we document our discovery that the biosphere evolves by a natural process akin to computer autoencoding. We establish the following points: The survival of species is computed by what we term natural autoencoding : arrays of input interactions generate species codes, which survive by decoding into sustained ecosystem interactions. This group process, termed survival-of-the-fitted, supplants the Darwinian struggle of individuals and survival-of-the-fittest only. DNA is only one element in natural autoencoding.3)Naturalautoencoding and artificial autoencoding techniques manifest defined similarities and differences. Biosphere autoencoding and survival-of-the-fitted sheds a new light on the mechanism of evolution. Evolutionary autoencoding renders evolution amenable to new approaches to computer modeling.