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Self-Organizing Circuit Reinvents Radio
PortWineBoy writes "An evolutionary computer program that controls circuits connected to transistors is told to 'breed' an oscillator. Instead, it breeds a radio receiver which picks up oscillation produced by a nearby computer to achieve the desired result. It seems interesting to me but does it have any implications or applications? Any thoughts on how something like this could be used elsewhere?"
I bred tic-tac-toe programs around 1987, and they were always surprising me. The first round of winners evolved to win by cheating -- they found a bug in my software that allowed them to make three moves all at once and win on the first move!
When I fixed that, they cheated again, by collusion: when they played the O's they dithered and did nothing, so that when they played the X's they could get an easy win with no resistance. I had to breed the O and X populations separately to fix that.
As for finding genetically evolved solutions puzzling, again that's par for the course. It is extremely difficult, in fact, to breed populations whose solutions *do* make sense. They find "organic", bizarre, complicated, twisted, fragile solutions much more often than something simple and straight-forward.
I gave a talk entitled "On the Evolution of Dishonesty" on the phenomenon to the local AI society (the title being of course a take-off on Axlerod's "Evolution of Cooperation"
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
...evolution always cheats, though no doubt there are numerous experiments where that doesn't happen and no one think it's special...
That's because evolution knows no rules. Therefore, evolution does not cheat. It's sole task is to follow the path of least resistance.
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
The article is sensationalist and irresponsible, as it talks of how the genetic algorithm "surprised the scientists", and how nobody knows how the circuit "figured out" one trace could act as an antenna.
The problem is that the non-tech-savvy of the world will read this and actually be made to believe these are thinking machines which are truly learning on their own. It conjures up images of a Matrix future.
I'm quite sure the scientists didn't find the results all that stunning. They ran random mutations and "evolved" an oscillator from the interconnections of 10 transistors. The algorithm of course *failed* to generate an oscillator, and instead cheated by picking up a nearby radiowave.
Nothing in the circuit "figured out" about antennas and radio waves - it was just random luck, much as any result in such an experiment is.
Some might argue with calling the cheating oscillator a failure. I disagree - I think it's a wonderful example of how far AI research has to go yet. What they wanted was an oscillator, presumably one that would work (were this a circuit designing machine in the real world) elsewhere outside the lab. The algorithm was too dumb to realize it's design won't be portable past the lab table.
I really don't think random mutation with selection is going to be the answer, if there's even an answer to be had. Computers are for automating, humans using them as tools are for innovating.
11*43+456^2
Like, what if a evolved chip only works properly at a range of 35-40 C ? Or more easly affected on electroic noise, or needs electronic noise? Like the circuit in this article, if there was no osculation nearby, it probaly wouldn't work would it?
This is the main thing to understand from these experiments - yes, they'd probably fail when removed from that environment, but then conventionally evolved life, which has adapted in the same way to use what's around it (Humans for example, in a most basic sense, use oxygen, certain foods, night/day to stay functioning and sane) are the same. Stick us in a different atmosphere, feed us nothing but one nutrient (say, caffeine) and keep it permanent nighttime, and we turn into coders.
a grrl & her quadra
Sadly, the evolving circuit was forced into bankruptcy court soon after the RIAA filed new CARP legislation through their paid-congressman of the week in which the circuit was made to pay $.07 per radio channel picked up per listening receiver.
Witnesses say the circuit was last seen on the corner of 7th and Main Street evolving its pan-handling skills.
Well, everytime I've played with circuits on a breadboard, 9 times out of 10, if it involves a speaker, I hear the local high-powered AM news station coming out of it. If there's a computer nearby, I hear "digital noise". In fact it's pretty damn annoying and changes depending on how close my fingers are, whether I'm touching this or that part, etc.
All you need is an antenna (stray bit of connecting wire), diode (transistor would work), filter (all the capacitance and resistance in a breadboard) and amplifier.
I wonder if they went back and checked, just how many combinations DON'T pick up the harmonics of nearby computers... I'd bet most of them pick up the noise.