Comment by svara

That's one way to look at it, as just the next iteration of subredditsimulator.

The qualitatively new step leading to emergent behavior will be when the agents start being able to interact with the real world through some interface and update their behavior based on real world feedback.

Think of an autonomous, distributed worm that updates its knowledge base of exploit techniques based on trial and error and based on information it discovers as it propagates.

It might start doing things that no human security researcher had foreseen, and that doesn't require great leaps of the imagination based on today's tech.

That's when you close the evolutionary loop.

I think this isn't quite that yet, but it points in that direction.