Open-Ended Evolution Without Autonomy
The report corpus expands the earlier Cognivirus thesis: variation, selection, inheritance, and succession can be properties of the development process even when no deployed model self-modifies at runtime.
Pipeline-level evolution
A CI system can generate candidate prompts. A fine-tuning job can create adapters. A merge tool can recombine checkpoints. A canary process can select winners. A registry can preserve descendants. Humans may approve every step, but the pipeline still creates selection pressure.
Why this matters
Treating “not autonomous” as “not evolutionary” misses the risk. The ecology may still preserve behaviors through repeated derivative creation and selection.
Boundary
This page does not collapse ordinary engineering automation, governed model breeding, and uncontrolled replication into one category. It distinguishes them so controls can match the actual risk.