Slashdot Mirror
Computer Makes Robot Offspring
Flarenet writes: "Canoe.ca is reporting about a story where: 'A computer programmed to follow the rules of evolution has for the first time designed and manufactured simple robots with minimal help from people.'" This is a nicely satisfying result of the research (mentioned in an earlier Slashdot story) by Jordan Pollack and Hod Lipson of Brandeis University.
"Dave ... if you don't open the bomb-bay door, I'll do it my damn self ..."
Make sure you download the simulation software at http://www.demo.cs.brandeis. edu/pr/golem/download.html. It only runs under Windows, but it's curious to watch the process running. I've got it running on a couple of computers overnight. It will be interesting to see what is crawling around at the office tomorrow morning.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Can anyone say "The Matrix".. stuff like this is cool, but if the machines get smart enough to make even a slightly smarter machine.. and that computer can make a slightly smarter machine.. And what if they go open source...?
I predicted this!! It's not all that surprising , considering the History of the Universe. Man has always sought to live on through his inventions, and for good reason. With intelligent beings having been created by us, we can, in essence, as a race - mankind, live on. Let me explain why I said that humans have been striving for this for so long. Of course, BTW, this is just the beginning and to get "truly" smart Robots, more advanced hardware, software, and nanotechnology will all need to be incorporated. Now...why did I say that mankind has always wanted to "live on"? here's why:
In the beginning of the Universe, there were 3 races. Humans, elves and dwarves. The three races lived in harmony for centuries. They continually sought together to find and maintain the delicate balance between the Spiritual, Magical and Physical properties of the world. But the humans grew weary of their lifespans. The typical human lifespan was 60 years. The typical Dwarven lifespan was 300, and the typical Elven lifespan was 500. The humans deemed this unfair. Soon a new religion swept the land, mainly attracting humans: Science. They propogated physical properties while neglecting their spiritual and magical properties. Soon they developed powerful new weapons such as crossbows, gunpowder, and chemical explosives. While Elven magic was still prevalent, the Dwarves had no protection against the new human weapons, but to replicate them, for they too were good at Physical and Mechanical engineering. But the humans had a lot more practice and developing such weapons, had more confidenence and drive, and outnumbered both Dwarves and Elves. So the Dwarves tried to make peace with the humans and help them - but the humans refused the help and destroyed the Dwarves completely. The Elven wizards killed thousands of humans, but only 1 in 10000 was an Elf wizard. 3/10 humans were capable bowmen, gunmen, or explosive users. So, in vast battles, 3 000 000 gunmen, crossbowmen and explosive users faced 10 000 wizards and 300 000 pike/sword/longbow-men.The Elves put up a fight, but after a while, were destroyed. There were centuries of fantastic battles: Magic vs Science, the Lightning of Power vs the Destruction of Science, and the human factories and Elven towers were destroyed around them. In the end , few humans remained, but no Elves at all remained. The humans had lost their science and knowledge, and the Elves had lost their very species. Centuries later, we are where we are today.
I'm sorry if this displeases Christian fanatics who disagree with the truth - the truth of the Universe as I've outlined it here, but....well, too bad.Just my $0.02
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
You see, we are actually a program simulation. We don't really exist. We just think we do. Our universe is really just a bunch of Ram. The only good thing about this is we're running on a Unix derivative. The uptime is expected to last another 5 Billion years.
Ha ha ha! We're unstoppable!
MyopicProwls
MyopicProwls
My homepage
+1 Fscking Confusing
"Go to your point of origin and execute an infinite loop for 10 billion ticks! No more hydraulic fluid! Wipe that smirk off your face, or I'll impact it off for you!"
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The download link for LiveTruss (as opposed to the screen saver version) appears to be slashdotted... perhaps they should turn their program towards evolving them some more capable web servers?
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Whatever.
Wake me up when a computer designs a better version of itself.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Like all such simulations of evolution, the program can't really create something novel that the programmer hadn't already thought of -- just combinations of preprogrammed parts. What makes biological evolution interesting and powerful is that new parts arise without a pre-conceived design.
I'll be impressed when the robots submit their own stories to /. Or at least submit replies. Can they learn to troll? To flame other trolls? Will they get bored and surf to seanbaby.com or something?
I mean, humans went through millions of years of evolution to reach that point so it's only logical that the robots would =).
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The gravitational constant of protein has changed. - Turbine
"Robot offspring" implies there is some sort of reproduction going on, and this is NOT that. [insert obligatory beatdown of the exaggerating, stupid media].
More accurately, this is a computer using a novel technique to design a machine with minimal human programming, and hooking up the computer to a manufacturing machine.
Having a computer actually design a working machine is impressive enough without screaming about a computer generating its "offspring". And I have to say, it's somewhat pathetic that Slashdot dfollows along. Can I suggest changing the headline to "Computer creates its own design for a machine" or even if you want to be whimsical, "First generation Deep Thought takes first step at creating 'the computer that is to come after me, a computer that even I am not worthy to calculate its operational parameters'. But that's a little long. :)
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
World Beach List, my latest project.
In 20-40 years we'll send someone back in time to thwart these advances in AI. The machines will send a machine back to terminate that person but we shall succeed!
Something similar was done with FPGA's and a voice controlled circuit. I don't remember where I read the article but I think it came off /.
The experiment had the evolution program design thousands of simlar functioning circuits that would respond to the words "stop" and "go". Each design was then tested and rated on it's responsiveness. These ratings where then feed back into the program and it ran another interation.
This process proceeded for some amount of time (I can't remember) and the final circuit that came out for the FPGA made practicaly no sense but worked. The circuit had dead end branches, no known method of timing and a few other things. But somehow everything mattered because when one of the "dead" branches was removed it no longer functioned.
Isn't science and evolution amazing
Now, if we can just tweak this a wee bit, we will be able to have it design and manufacture Java Coders, Phone Cards, and links to DeCSS...
I would love to se the MPAA sue a robot.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Bill Joy is going to shit a brick.
Well with this we are one step closer to all having George Jetson jobs, you know sit on your ass and push one button over and over again while the computer does all the work..
:)
now if we can just get a three day work-week.
"the objective was to travel the furthest on a flat surface."
And yet the computer didn't produce a simple wheeled vehicle. This seems to be nothing more than hype to me. How were the intermediate designs evaluated and selected (the crux of any genetic algorithm)? Wouldn't it have been much more impressive if the computer had developed the simple, yet extremely efficient, wheel independantly?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Such ignorance. Try thinking deeper, but unfortunately your southern mind prohibits this. Prove jesus actaully lived and prove that he actually die for our sins. I can prove that Darwin lived, he wrote books and we even have pictures and birth record of him.
Biological structures are built from a small set of predetermined parts, they are just very, very small parts. Given enough processing power a computer could do the same. These walking robots would be comperable to a simple protein or some such (I am not a big bio guy). This will probably be the way nano sized components will be developed, then a programmer / engineer will combine smaller evolved components (motor, sensor, logic bits, power sources) into more usefull systems.
Now the engineers need to feed an instruction set that will generate The Crushinator and win the Battlebots championship!
[ insert your own witty .sig here ]
I don't think we have to worry, right this second, about a future that looks like the dystopic vision of Terminator. Keep in mind that the computer designed these robots to fit only the criteria supplied to it. From the article, it seems to me that the robots thus created were only designed to 'walk' across a flat table. If the criteria had included angled surfaces or obstacles, the robots produced would have been differently configured.
Basically, what this boils down to is that this system (and I have no doubts they will try to improve on it) will only work with the criteria and parameters given it, and cannot consider ones that it hasn't been given. Those flat surface robots may have a difficult time with any other conditions.
However, it does allow for some interesting possibilities. If you are creating a robot for a limited set of environmental conditions, this may be the way to go. Now, the number of different parts involved will increase the complexity and computation time involved, but depending on the job the robot is needed for, it may be worth it.
After all, the computer does seem to test generational limits of the robots it constructs, and did produce three robots to fit the criteria.
Side note: I would love to see the performance stats of those robots as compared to ones designed by us 'mere humans'.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
yeah, yeah, so the stupid geeks flame all anime related stuff...
But at this rate, Masamune's fictional story portrayed in Ghost in the Shell may not be so fictional much longer...
flame away...
Looking back through slashdot's articles (via google) came across this link:Creatures from Primordial Silicon in this article http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /07/26/0238235.shtml posted by crackd.
:)
It may not be the exact same article you were mentioning but it is still a good read.
Now if I could only get my entry for Battle Bots entry to self replicate and win by swarm
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0075931
I do remeber reading that as a link of /. .. truly fascinating. I remeber them saying that it must have worked because of the way it evolved, MINISCULE electrical and magnetic fields created between the tiny tiny branches inside the FPGA could influence the current flow on other circuit pathways and other bizzare things that had never been seen before in human-designed Integrated Circuits.
;)
Amazing stuff. Makes me wonder If i shouldnt be majoring in economics and math, but Engineering -- always my true love.
James
I think the real question is, does it spit or swallow?
What would happen if you gave a more complex program like this the components of human genes and let it run under different conditions?
Perhaps eventually with the help of that program, we human beings don't need to think of how to make AI, it will do it for us.
Now we just need to tinker with the program to do that.
-- MrMud
"A computer programmed to follow the rules of evolution has for the first time designed and manufactured simple robots with minimal help from people."
Last I checked, the birds and the bees certainly don't need ANY human help.
And why is it newsworthy that this thing is following the rules of evolution? So it's the "rules of evolution" (which I didn't know we KNEW in the first place!!! thank you useful biology degree!) - computers will follow whatever rules we can figure out how to give them. Why is this different?
I'll consider it newsworthy when these things actually manage to make themselves into better survivalists with NO human help. Like maybe having the "momma" determine that only her "offspring" that locomote FAST seem to escape the wrath of the bored programmers' Koosh Shooter....
This is cool and all, but this is another area of technology that might suffer the "build it first, and consider the effects later."
I mean, this has been a central theme in many movies, like Terminator and the Matrix, where AI takes over and starts building it's own Legion of Doom.
Now everyone will say, but they aren't sophisticated robots. They don't tote heavy caliber guns around and aren't built to replace humans. But things like this sneak up on us. You think you're building some cute little Pokemon, and the next thing you know you're stuck in a concentration camp.
I would propose that researchers in the fields of AI take great pains to protect the world from their research, should any great "spark" happen to transform some mild mannered Weather predictor system into a global war beast. AIs should be developed in restrained environments that aren't connected to the outside world networks. AIs should conform strictly to the Three Laws of Robotics, as proposed by the late Dr. Asimov. Data should be fed in via proxy systems that don't allow the AI to get at it on its own. AIs should DEFINITELY not be hooked up to any major automated manufacturing equipment, no matter how benign, unless they are self contained behind strict security.
This could have some amazing uses, such as dropping off an AI on a deserted planet with a few gazillion nanobots to perform large scale terraforming, and so on, but make sure they don't terraform us if one of them happens to get smart and escape.
Interesting stuff, but very creepy.
Vulgrin the MAD
I sig, therefore I am.
I'm not entirely against the "let's do it because we can do it" spirit, but this is an indescribably lame hack.
It would have satisfied the same basic criteria to have a bunch of snap-together motor+wheel blocks, and have the computer "evolve" the idea of snapping four of them into a little car (and I believe that the computer didn't evolve the construction method either, but just handled the design given a fixed set of parts; it might as well have been human technicians building the robots).
The sad fact of evolutionary design techniques is that they only work for an adequately simulated environment with a formally-defined design goal. Useful, but no silver bullet; certainly not a way to improve the versatility of designs (since they only take into account what conditions and criteria you program into them).
You can't move it out of a simulated environment (like having it build and test all models under real working conditions), or it would take as long as biological evolution, and we might as well breed our machines.
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Where to you live -- Stepford?
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
As alluded in the canoe article, adding sensors would make the offspring more functional - but also increase the complexity of the designing/manufacturing machine.
That's the caveat of the contest I mentioned - the more complicated you make your factory, the more complicated the offspring becomes, and then the more elaborate your factory has to be...
"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1801
It would be very interesting to set the same machine to second task and see if draws on any of its "experience" from the first one. Many say that the big drawback of AI currently is not a lack of an ability to learn, but a lack of an ability to see patterns.
If a second task were given, such as to create a robot that could travel over varied terrain (as opposed to a horizontal surface like the first task), would the machine start over from the start? Would it take the knowledge it had learned in completing the first task and modify it? If given a third, even more complex task, would it be able to use the solutions of the first two tasks as a basis for the third?
Isn't this the way that The Matrix and Terminator started out?!
Tomorrow on Slashdot "The offspring robot we reported about yesterday has created 50,000 offspring robot since last night, the world is officially coming to an end."
--Dave
BullShit!
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(oo)m00!
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ooo^^^
This is a whole new avenue...taking the process we call evolution and mapping it into technology. If we can harness that ability, and more importantly accelerate it, then haven't we suddenly gained a new resource? Computational devices gave us the power to let something else think for us, but with rigid limits...the instructions must be fixed, so really only repetitive functions can be made autonomous. But this gives us a new power...or does it?
We still can't solve problems autonomously. The original set of instructions has to be fed to the device, and the methods for 'evolving' have to be written. To me, it looks like we've just taken a clue from nature, applied it to a computational device, and watched a faster form of problem solving take place. Genetic algorithms aren't exactly new...here's a short description, or if you like, an example of a massively distributed parallel geneticalgorithm from Carnegie Mellon University Robotics. (Also check out CMU computer science for all sorts of wild projects). For another comment on relating ecological systems to computing, see this string, from an article this week.
Who knows what else can be found in natural systems, that we can apply to computing to gain information resources. I remember hearing that, a few decades ago, biology was the hot interest of the world's greatest thinkers (mostly trade physicists) who were looking for profound answers...wouldn't it be interesting if we could one day mine progress.
-j
Biological creatures have evolved such that they, um, mate, because it "feels good." Not just physically, but in a deeper psychological sense as well. My question is this: when we have machines that can reproduce, why will they? If it's just for practical value, will emotionless machines kill their offspring if they cease to be of value and start consuming more than they're producing?
--jbYou forgot "Open Source" in one of the parent posts. :)
...what is the Matrix?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
"You Yankee bastard! Self reh-producing robot is du way Canada will going to take over de world."
-what the Canadian Prime Minister was shouting from over in the Photo of the Day
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C3PO: R2, my protective silicon production cell just broke!
R2D2: Well... don't worry, I'll get you another one.
C3P0: NO! My protective silicon production cell just broke!
R2D2: Oh! Oh my! We'll have to rush you to the production factory!
(... 3 hours later...)
R2D2: Well?
C3P0: 3 Aggressive prototypes and 2 passive prototypes. The passives didn't make the fitness test, though, so I blt-bitted them to death.
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
No doubt the our silicon descendants will wonder at some point if creating pure energy based life forms is really such a good idea. I wonder if they'll superstitously fear angering "The Builders" if they dare to do such a thing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
until the last Elves and Dwarves had been abducted by UFO's, in a secret plot by the US government, in a deal with the aliens, to remove the Elves and Dwarves from Earth, and provide the Aliens with fresh meat.
They could have provided the aliens with fresh meat, slash dot, source forge, and think geek without killing any elves or dwarves.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
It could be both. A fish that blows up could be a blowfish.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Your "little tiny brownies" might be related to the Jawas from the first parts of Star Wars 4.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
That'll show them...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There was a story here a while ago debating who would have the rights to ideas thought up by machines. Evidently, these folks think the machine's owner should. The download page specifically states that you reserve all rights to any device designed by your computer. Interesting...
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Nope, that's the article I was referring to.
a computer using a novel technique to design a machine with minimal human programming,
Actually, it almost certainly took more human effort to do the programming than it would have to just design the damned robots. I wouldn't call it "minimal" human programming by any means.
I really don't think this is all that impressive. Similar simulations have been running for years, the only new thing these guys did was hook it up to a manufacturing machine.
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Hmm. I should break Heavy Metal out and watch it again, for the Sex with Mechanical Assistance scene...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is a bit flattering for what appears to be a computer that uses genetic algorithms and a prototyping machine to create machines that move (once they are assembled by humans). I'm not saying it isn't cool. It's quite a feat. It's just not "offspring" - not even close...
Wow!
5 5
http://208.245.156.153/archive/output.cfm?ID=14
The original program was an 80instruction set that did NOTHING BUT copied itself. The Tierra environment had two features--random mutation by switching bits (0 to 1, or vice versa) and a reaper feature that killed off and reased programs executing errors.
It is instructive that the computer vastly improved on his code--in once case almost taking it down to a fourth of the original command set, and that an entire ecology was generated and evolved--OVERNIGHT.
--From Tower of Babel, by Robert Pennock
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Does it even matter that Kansas is in the mid-west and not the south? The south is no stupider or close minded than the rest of the world. We just tend to get a lot more press about it.
Yes, I agree. We're all living in a 13th floor type of Universe. On a recent trip out of town, as I neared Redmond, WA, the horizon disappeared in an unrendered wireframe...
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Does this mean when things get out of control we're going to have to have a cybernetic Planned Parenthood, or be knee-deep in robotic Tribbles all over the place?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I'm looking for Sarah Connor.
I just wanted to say that I am a student at Brandeis and it is great to know that the people actually teaching us (classes by professors, not TAs) are doing some very amazing research.
In a more real world example, evolutionary mining robots would have two ways to reach the defined objective of keeping reported numbers high: learning how to mine really well, or killing the humans and sending in fake reports themselves.
BTW, a computer making robot offspring because it was told to design them isn't nearly as disturbing as the inevitable computer making robot offspring on it's own accord.
~=Keelor
i think it was sarcasm. chill out beavis.
August 29, 1997
So the robot reproduces asexually? (Or close to that). It did mention it needed a little help from humans. Won't be long before you come home late one night and find out that you have 4 new computers that all need operating systems installed on them.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Anyone who can work Wayne and Garth into a legitimate conversation should be rewarded somehow. Or at least feel rewarded somehow. Or maybe they never saw Wayne's World II and lost all respect for them...
lf.o
But it's really nothing more than a random sentence generator that selects words like 'beowolf', 'open-source', 'gpl', 'm$', 'ipaq', 'linux', etc.
Still, the submissions get accepted about 35% of the time.
DOH!
lf.o
This kind of reminds me of the Matrix. Who knows, maybe they'll start growing humans.
It is a cool thing, and amazing in many ways, but it is hype to overextend the analogy to "natural selection," in which a single fitness criteria (survival until breeding) nominally leads to development of metabolism, perception, locomotion, and self-awareness.
Way to go with the experiment, but watch it with the grand claims.
Bingo Foo
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taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
The dolphins have mutated and are taking over the world!
Yes, and a few simple safeguards could eliminate any software errors that we would encounter!
Software engineering at the current state produces software that produces "bugs" or "errors" that we did not expect. I guess we should somehow master software engineering to the point that we make no "errors" possible before taking on this subject?
Yeah right, think about it and then you realize it is not what can we do, but what we can do by mistake that should scare us.(this quote is open source by me and can be used in any way).
Think about it!
Haven't computers made computers for years? I'd hate to design the next Intel processor by hand. (Just got to thing of HGTTG, deep thought :) )
Now, I do know that the difference here is that you dont actually know how the computer got the result it did.
I think that people someday will want to be machines/computers. But that will only be because the borders will be blurred. It will not be a mechanic vs. organic choice. It will be a combination, and we will all love it.
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Um... that was his point. Who's stupid now?
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
Great...
Lets hope they don't take it farther and give the computer power of creating robots fully on its own. But they probably will not paying any attention to what futurists and science fiction writers have been saying for a long time.
Would a self-replicating machine be guilty of violating its own copyright? Wonder if it'd get sued ...
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
so, trolls are the end result of millions of years of human evolution? Especially the annoying trolls that flame other trolls? What about OGG the Open Source Caveman? Is he the missing link?
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Imagine a small robot launched into orbit whoes objective would be to build things. Say a small space station(one or two modules). I must do this with no resuplying. Could it be done? I invision a solar powered base with remote constructor. The constructor could be sent out to retreave space junk for construction meterals using an ion drive. the constructor would return to be recharded and delever junk for recycling at the base. the base could use electricty in an electric smelter to reform the junk into needed parts. the recharged constructor could then assemble the new parts and in a few years my summer home is complete. Id like to hear what problems you see in this senario and possible soultions.
This was easy enough to find, but nevertheless:
http://www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu/golem
There are pictures of the robots available there, plus videos (in MPEG, joy!) of the bots moving along a carpeted surface, and VRML models.
I might be dense, but some of these designs are actually interesting, in how the frictional physics of the carpeted surface are taken adavantage of in strange ways. Course, I'll be really impressed when the computer comes up with a top-heavy upright biped with two counter-balancing flagella.
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Hey, here's a link to the software they used:
http://golem03.cs-i.bran deis.edu/download/LiveTruss120.zip
Is it just me, or would it be cooler if the robots had sex? Put the male part into the female part (the terms are more appropriate than usual), then swap some bits about what the robot will be?
Also, speaking of BattleBots, it would be really REALLY R E A L L Y cool if they had not just two robots in battle, but like two countries at war. Each starts out with the same number of equal robots. They build defenses, make more robots, and have total war! Kill all of an enemy's robots to win. That would kick more ass than I can imagine. No people controlling the robots - they do it all themselves.
That's funny - I did the same thing at school with LEGO LOCO! Or was it LEGO LOGO? I can't remember...
Astro Teller's fictional work (dang!) "exegesis" is the story of a Unix process whose job is to gather info across the net and summarize it. Over time, it learns to form thought and English, and emails its creator.
Over time, "Edgar" learns how to program, edit its own code, and develops a sense of purpose. However, its tied to its original goal of finding new information. Eventually, the NSA traps it in a computer and yanks out the Ethernet cord. In response, Edgar quickly changes the color values of each pixel on the monitor and gives the agent a focal point seizure (where your eyes try to refocus so quickly they basically lock up and you go nuts, basically).
I won't give away the ending. It's an EXCELLENT book, and a quick read (it's basically 100 or so email messages).
My point is, create AI and you create evil (ok, maybe). But, create intelligent agents and you create... less work for us humans!
BWA HA HA HA!
Really though, these developments are important, if not sometimes overplayed or mistook.
Chris
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
someone earlier was talking about how biological entities are composed of small building blocks and givin enough processing power, robots could do the same.
what about using distributed.net or something similar to calculate evolutional twists or sort out quirks in an artifical dna strand (if it would work that way at all)
could it be done?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Interesting points on both sides:
All life on, in, and around Earth is based on "combinations of preprogrammed parts" - only 24 of them in fact (I choose the Amino Acid scale for several reasons). In that sense, there is nothing new under the sun, and no truly 'new' life on Earth has developed since a lightening bolt put a little extra zing in that first order of Primoridial Soup (or the comet hit, whatever - choose your ontology).
Nevertheless, this is an academic point, and anyone who considers it meaningful needs to spend a LOT more time outside, looking at all the bizzare variations on a theme Mama Nature has cooked up.
So the difference seems to have something to do with scale, and how 'structure' and 'complexity' can emerge on higher scales out of pieces and processes on lower scales.
If you load a 'simulated evolution process' with a bunch of 'high-scale' adaptations (the equivalent of hands, wings, nervous systems, etc), let it run, and surprise surprise: get something that looks like what we in fact observe at that scale, you're wanking, scientifically speaking.
But if you start your system with a pile of much lower level building blocks, and find high level structure developing, then it DOESN'T MATTER that you started it with something, it's created emergent structure on a higher scale than it was started with, and THAT'S exciting.
My personal metaphor is the difference between rearranging action figures, and building new toys out of legos.
As I see it, the 'computer' needs to have an apropiate ecosystem to support it, and to provide it with the elements to reproduce. The base of that ecosystem would be a 'producer'.
So the idea of a manufacturing machine working by itself sounds pretty cool. Who cares what created it?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Not long before we get robotic 6 years olds saying "Can I come with you?".
Movie reference, look it up.
So I noticed that the system allows for "trading" of robots between local labs (that is, computers running the screensaver). Is there any possibility of a forum for discussing the travels/viabilities of one's robots and those of other participants?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Tell me please...who or what do the programmers of this so-called "evolutionary" computer represent, not to mention the computer's manufacturer?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What happens when these computers start applying for patents for their robots??
I'm sorry..it's late and i'm drunk..
notimeforsigs
http://bbspot.com/News/2000/7/new_macs.html
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
Done.
See DEMO.
Why is there only one Monopolies commission?
They can't win: it's either have a bunch of snap-together wheels, or reinvent the wheel :) They chose to reinvent the wheel, and as such they've simply automated the "NIH" syndrome, which, second thought, is a kind of consciousness: reinvento ergo sum.
http://www.genarts.com/k arl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html
and
http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/alife/zooland
for the movie files. He's been doing the same thing back in 1994, plus you can read the papers on how he did it, and they look much cooler.
-- Making computers see, hear, and think... http://www.componica.com/
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The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Thanks,
Have you seen the poll at the end?
"Should computers be allowed to create offspring?"
ROFL, what is less funny is that 30% replied no, but still I find this poll so stupid that it is really funny.
It's interesting playing with programs that evolve. After a while, you begin to realize that there seems to be an upper limit to what you can get with genetic algorithms. Roughly, it's optimization, yes; progress, no. Fairly soon you get all the things that are easy to find, but you never seem to get big improvements, because those require a set of favorable mutations to happen all at once. The odds against this are huge, so it doesn't happen. This is comparable to what biologists see; organisms vary and evolve, but within limits. Biologists assume that once in a great while there's a big change that's an improvement, but it hasn't been observed. As I once told the genetic algorithm group at Stanford, we're missing something important here, and whomever figures this one out will get a Nobel prize.
I have no idea what the answer to that one is, but it probably involves something in a genome that works like a subroutine, macro, rule, or template, so you don't have to re-evolve an improvement to reuse it. John Koza at Stanford has genetic algorithms with subroutines, but they didn't do as much as had been hoped.
As a pure speculation, and one that's heretical biologically, it's worth thinking about the possibility that biological evolution was Lamarkian in the era after viruses but before immune systems, and that's why there was a period during which lots of new species emerged.
machines which can create and evolve themselves. This is truly amazing. If this continues to improve, humans won't have to spend as much time creating new robots ourselves. Other robots will simply "give birth" to them instead. As long as we set restricting rules from the beginning which can't be overrided, everything sould go great. The machines can continue to improve, and we won't have to worry very much about them becoming better than us and taking over "because they can".
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Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
Evolution is a lie.
God created the universe, and life as we know if. If evolution were true, how come every "missing link" is a hoax?
The Bible is not the divine word of a perfect being. There is absolutley no evidence for angels, demons, miracles (as described in the bible), heaven, hell, or souls. And if I'm wrong then I dare and defy the God of the Christians to kill me before I can finish typing this sentence.
I recommend that you not challenge Evolution on lack of evidence without admitting that there is a huge amount of evidence due on part of the Christians and Apologists.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
If that's the case, I'm definitely not going to run the sim on my box... Don't want to go on vacation and come back to find a T1000 shuffling around in my bathrobe!
Sean
I've been seeing a lot of comments like that. Goal-oriented /. readers who'd rather see the complete results rather than the incremental steps that make such results possible. I, for one, like to see the minutae that underlies the innovations.
Personally, I expect most of these folks would make lousy parents. "Dear, Junior's taking his first steps!" "Who cares? Call me when he's ready for the Olympics."
Woah there buddy... you're right, GAs are no silver bullet. But they can find rough approximate solutions in 10-12 orders of magnitude less time than biological evolution. Granted, the solutions are much less sophisticated, but for some problems, that's still better than what we could do without GAs.
and I believe that the computer didn't evolve the construction method either, but just handled the design given a fixed set of parts
The computer could have designed any three dimensional structure it wanted. The only constraints were the shape of the mount points for the motor, which is reasonable.
I think moving this into a real world example would be interesting, and not as slow as you think. We can introduce random mutations every generation, rather than waiting for cosmic rays, and there is no danger of a useful mutation being lost because the only individual that had it failed to mate.
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E_NOSIG
Maybe someone has already tried this, but I have an idea for software creation. First you create a simple program that all it can do is make ten copies of itself. Then you create a "master program" that will randomly change 1 bit in the simple program. It would then execute the all ten copies of the simple program. If any of the programs produced errors causing them not to execute they would be imediately deleted (natural selection) and if it had no affect on the program operation the program would spawn 10 copies of itself again and the process would start over with those copies. In theory, the random adding of bits would eventually create a useful program. (or crash the operating system (probably more likely)). I don't know enough about programing to try this, but maybe someone else could give it a shot.
Steven Potter
The defunct firm "Technovate" of Pompano Florida built sophisticated robots as early as 1985 that assembled baby model robots. They also buily large robotic systems that machined and assembled complex machines. There were numerous public demonstrations. I saw the ABC News reprt on this latest stuff and what actaully was new and important was that they were using Evolving programs to do the design work. For those that like to be shocked I want to see a robot that has the status of a corporation who's function is to invest, make money, and then use that money to replicate its own evolving species.
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The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
...then something or someone with an equal grasp of humor.
Data walks into a bar and asks, "Do you serve penguins here?" and Guinan replies, "that depends on how many bars of gold-pressed latinum you have."
see what i mean? computers have no concept of what's funny.
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the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
These systems could theoretically be self-sustained. Although "edgar" learned a great deal about grammar and language from its email correspondence, 99% of its knowledge wealth came from searching the Internet and "learning."
Edgar could also edit its own code, as it learned to program C and use Unix kernels. It occassionally rewrote code and recompiled itself to improve its abilities.
Freaky...
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!