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Swarm Intelligence

Posted by michael on from the alfred-hitchcock dept.

elamdaly writes "Eric Bonabeau, Ph.D, a keynote speaker at the upcoming Emerging Technology conference, is a leader in the field of swarm intelligence and has focused on applying these concepts to real world problems such as factory scheduling and telecommunications routing. The concept itself is borrowed from nature; in this interview, that's where the conversation begins, with ants and other social insects. Dr. Bonabeau takes us from his childhood nightmares of carnivorous wasps to applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world."

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. A more in-depth introduction... by The+Beezer · · Score: 5, Informative

    by Tony White can be found here.

  2. Emergence by Will_uk · · Score: 5, Informative

    The arising of complex behaviour from simple agents is also known as Emergence. It is a subject I have recently begun to study and it deals with the amazing structures, methods of information storage etc which arise in complex networks. Very little of this emerging behaviour can actually be predicted if one is to only examine the behaviour of the individual agents. The reason I bring this up is to plug a book (a popular pastime here apparently!). Its called 'Emergence' by Steven Johnson and it is this book which introduced me to Slashdot. Did you know that slashdot's rating system allows it to act as a forum and knowledge repository on a large scale, without suffering from the needless wastes of spam which ruin other similar forums. Its a difficult topic to explain but the author devotes an entire chapter to Slashdot and how its design encorporates emergant factors to allow its success. Interesting stuff, and a fascinating book too! Will

  3. Swarm Intelligence: The book by Jouni · · Score: 5, Informative
    There's a book on Amazon by the same name (not the one mentioned earlier in this thread). It's a very good overview of artificial social intelligence models, very profound in places. Incidentally, Amazon offers it at a discount when bought together with Bonabeau's book of the same title.

    People interested in intelligence and life as an emergent and evolving quality would probably also enjoy "Creation: Life and how to make it", "The Tipping Point", and "Figment of Reality". They should all be reasonably easy to find.

    I think there is plenty of room for new inventions from those who understand both software technology and the emergence of intelligence from social models.

    Read up! Enjoy!

    Cheers, Jouni

    --
    Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant