Swarm Intelligence

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."

Comments

Hmm, insects.. a blueprint for a deadly worm?

[xRelisH]

Reading the article, I was just thinking how deadly a worm that was based on how a colony of wasps or ants would behave. Considering wasps and ant's don't have extremely complex brains, all someone with malicious intent would do is to give it a basic behavior and how to interact with other worms it might encounter and how to share information with one another. I have a feeling I'm completely out of date here, I'm not too up to date with the worms of today and even yesterday, and perhaps something like this has been set loose and/or killed.

Prey

[Jason1729]

Shouldn't Michael Crichton have given this address? His novel, Prey, did a better job explaining this.

ProfQuotes

Proverbs 6:6

[cybermace5]

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."

Considering how that's been around for thousands of years, interesting that no one's really done much about it until now. Maybe no one thinks they're a sluggard. ;-)

Re: Proverbs 6:6

[Black Parrot]

> "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."

Also, "Go to the Ant" is the name of a famous paper on swarm computing from several years back, which can be found if you google for the phrase.

So it turns out that "go to" isn't always considered harmful.

Re:Proverbs 6:6

[cybermace5]

Interesting.

Under the guise of enlightenment, so many people are willing to tell you that the Bible is worthless and meaningless. Yet few of them will tell you to go read it yourself, and make your own decision. As one of the most enduring and popular works of literature in existence, it certainly deserves a read-through by anyone.

The popular media and culture encourages you to scoff at the Bible and those who read and believe it. Ask yourself this: are you being brainwashed to discount the Bible, without ever reading it yourself? Why should you accept at face value everything the mass media wants to tell you?

In your new Bible study, I suggest that you read the Old Testament and New Testament as what they are: a description of events in a "before and after" relationship. People claim the Bible is full of vengeance against unbelievers, bloody wars, and hatred; it is, and that's part of how life was in the Old Testament days. The New Testament describes a very different approach of peace and forgiveness.

Smart Dust

[PineHall]

That makes me think of Smart Dust and the network intelligence of Smart Dust.

http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDus t/
http://www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu/~warneke/SmartDu st/

Re:Smart Dust

[ColdForged]

That makes me think of Smart Dust and the network intelligence of Smart Dust.

I'll narrowly skirt OT and say that this sounds remarkably like the "localizer" technology in Vernor Vinge's sci-fi book, A Deepness in the Sky. And oh my God did I lust after that tech. That's the mark of good sci-fi (well, one of 'em, anyhow): lusting after what's described :). That's definitely OT. But lustworthy.

Freenet

[Anonymous Coward]

This certainly isn't the first attempt to apply these ideas to practical problems. Ian Clarke often describes swarm intelligence as one of the inspirations behind the Freenet design, for example in this article he says:

"My motivation from the technical side was, firstly, really, I was fascinated by the idea of complex systems, which are formed from simple individual entities all cooperating. An example would be an ant's nest, whereby all of these ants are following relatively simple rules, yet they all work together to make this effectively a kind of meta-organism, which is the ant's nest, which can feed itself and reproduce and defend itself. So I was fascinated by that idea, and I was very interested in trying to apply that to a computer system. And by combining [this idea with my idealogical motivations], I essentially came up with Freenet."

Hacker and the ants.

[PrimeNumber]

Reminds me of this post Once again Rudy Rucker proves prophetic. The protagonist of the story is a programmer named Jerzy Rugby who uses artifical life (ants!) to build and optimize robot source code.

Just like the ant analogy mentioned in the article, the ants were used for their collective ability to help build the smartest AI source. Again I recommend the read.

What about Genetic Algorithms?

[andrei_r]

This does not look much different from genetic algorithms, that have been used for years to solve optimization problems: Intro to GA
Note the words: "computationally expensive".

A.

A business application

[TopShelf]

For a good picture of how this would apply to the business world, check out this article from Business 2.0 about agent-based supply chain solutions. Pretty interesting stuff if you've got a large, sophisticated network to manage.

Re:Proverbs 6:6 Links

[antdude]

Links to this Bible famous verse that I had on my personal Web site (in The Reading Room):

1. Ants in Plan.
2. To Be Like The Ant.
3. How Strong Is the Ant: "Ants have many lessons to teach us. The power of unity and cooperation, the importance of the wise use of resources, the value of keeping busy and not wasting time, and the incredible wisdom built into the design of all living things. 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard; condider her ways, and be wise:' (Proverb 6:6)."

class

[DonkeyJimmy]

There was a programming class at MIT that used the swarm concept on AI for a game. The game was an RTS where each unit had it's own AI and could communicate to other units but not easily (short range, takes time). Each unit generally had a simple program, but your team had a fairly complex overall strategy. My team (Master Control Program) did pretty well in last years contest.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

Rodney Brooks proposed something similar for space exploration in 1989. Did anyone else see the Errol Morris documentary that features him? His paper is here: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control: A Robot Invasion of the Solar System

Re:Michael Crichton - Prey

[knobmaker]

I won't comment on the literary value of Crichton's novel, because I haven't read it. But less than a month ago, /. ran a story on Freeman Dyson's take on the science in the novel, which according to Dyson, was BAD.

While I agreed with Dyson that the nanotechnology-run-amuck theme of Prey, as he described it, was pretty silly, I wasn't reassured as to the essential harmlessness of nanotechnology. The swarming gray goo was probably designed to look fearsome in the inevitable movie, but there are subtler and scarier aspects to be considered.

On the other hand, the positive possibilities are off the imaginative chart too. What else is new?

Re:Michael Crichton - Prey

[bwhaley]

> Freeman Dyson's take on the science in the novel, which according to Dyson, was BAD.

This VERY well could be. I wouldn't have any idea. There is at least one code snippet in the book and I remember it being very vague and it certainly didn't add to the novel much. I'll be the first to admit that most of his novels aren't very accurate at all (Sphere, Congo, Andromeda Strain). I think Timeline is one exception. His books are very entertaining, at least in my opinion, and he still puts in a lot of research. He just has to spice it up a little for entertainment's sake. It is a fiction, after all :)

Ben

Are we a swarm of cells?

[lawpoop]

I've always thought that the idea of multi-celluar organisms to be a misnomer - we are actually more of a tightly integrated colony of cells.

I would define a cell as the basic life form, and anything greater than a cell is not a single 'creature'. Humans, like the ant colony, are a giant collaborative effort.

Of course, there's something in our brain that gives us the sense of I, the individual, irreducible person. It's an illusion. But it helps us survive, I guess (By us I mean "we cells," not you).

Ever since Adam Smith.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It's already being used in financial models. Explains everything from the dot-bomb crash to "tomorrow will, 2 out of 3 times, be like today"

Not just that:

Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" was exactly swarm intelligence emergent behavior: A large number of humans applying simple rules of self-interest organize large movements of capital goods into the production of more-desirable products by sending each other simple price signals.

Simiar comparisons might be made to the success of voluntary vs. totalitarian governmental systems, the free software movement, the explosion of network applications, and a number of other "less control gives better results" situations.

I think Dr. Bonabeau might find it useful, when trying to sell his ideas to administrators, to bring up these comparisons. Successful administrators and decision-makers already have a solid understanding of these concepts, so speaking in these terms should be immediately accessable.

Imagine going to a non-pointy-haired business exec or a conservative politician: Will he more quickly grasp an argument couched in terms of ants, or in terms of free markets?

Heck: Even central-control systems (such as bureaucracies and military staff command) work by giving only broad directions and letting the subordinates use their own intelligence (and local incentive structures) to work out the details. A fundamental lesson in officer training works as follows:

- Instructor gives the new second louies a platoon, a sergant, and a tent. Tells 'em to try to direct the men to pitch the tent.

- Each second louie tries to micro-manage the tent-pitching, with disastrous results.

- Then the instructor shows 'em how it's done:

"Sergant! (points to spot on ground) I want that tent pitched HERE!"

Then he goes away and lets the sergant handle it.

(Of course the sergant, in turn, passes the order on with only slight elaboration, maybe assigning labor division or providing feedback if somebody's slacking or screwing up. But mostly he lets the men, in turn, apply their own brains and brawn to doing their own pieces of the tent-raising.)

Re:Dirk Gently Navigation

[SN74S181]

That technique works pretty well for eBay browsing. There are tools out there now that give you a GUI interface to enter eBay IDs. It presents a list of all items that person has bid on that are current. It has a 'favorites' feature so you can have 'favorite' people you track.

It finds the 'good' stuff, i.e. the things that anybody would actually bid on. By cultivating collections of people who buy the kinds of things I am interested in, I seldom anymore actually browse 'raw' ebay for items to buy.

Interestingly, when you pull up a query for an eBay account held by someone in Germany, eBay returns a message that they aren't allowed to gather and give out that information for German citizens.

genetic algorithms

[iplayfast]

This technique sounds suspiciously like genetic algorithms.

Put out a bunch of genes, see which ones survive. The ones that don't die, the ones that do are re-integrated.

Put out a bunch of ants, see which bring back food. The ones that do, copy, the ones that don't forget about.

Or how about neural networks. Put out a bunch of connections. The ones that work, strengthen, the ones that don't weaken.

Is it just me or is it all the same general idea.

The process of creating Open Source

[Connectmc]

Hey...

Isn't this the way open source software is (ideally) built? Thousands of people, each with their own special abilities, each optimizing the solution little by little ? "Pheromones" marking the stable, useful modifications to the original "path" ?

Am I the only one...

[AlphaSys]

Who thinks that Bonabeau has to be an alias?

Even GNU geeks without the socialogical prowess of ESR must have investigated the etymology of the word Bonobo at some point. That an individual (whose name is a homynym of the name of the family of simians thought to be most closely related to humans because of their social habits and also happens to be the name of one of the most recognized GNU projects) is discussing animal-kingdom sociological theory applied to business process and application cycles is uhh... fishy in a very non-darwinian kind of way.

Wait -- his first name is Eric... maybe he is ESR!!!

Nah, I decided to really RTFA. Just coincidence. But it does make you wonder about monkeys and typewriters, although it appears they're more likely to produce "Origin of Species" than "King Lear"

Problems with swarm implementations

[sgt101]

Sure some of the demos are excellent. The problem is these implementations require just as much (at least) work as engineered solutions; it's just a different point of effort! Basically you have to discover how to make the self organising system organise itself to solve your problem, otherwise - it'll just sit and look at you. The trouble with this is that you don't know if it will work, until it works - a big risk for a commercial development project.