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

We

[QEDog]

We posted first!

We do this all the time

[LiftOp]

"....applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world."

We've found it works best when we all rush the intern at the same time. Down 'e goes! Ha! Whose nephew are you NOW?

Get his book

[flynt]

I recommend this book on Swarm Intelligence. It was written by experts in several different fields and is quite good.

From Amazon

in related news...

[matt4077]

all sugar-processing plants saw a huge increase in network traffic

swarming behaviour

[tomhudson]

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"

The man's a genius...

[The Beezer]

EB: My experience trying to "sell" the concepts of swarm intelligence to the commercial world is that managers would rather live with a problem they can't solve than with a solution they don't fully understand or control.

Guess he won't be giving the RIAA a call anytime soon, eh?

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 I have a feeling I'm completely out of date here, I'm not too up to date with the worms of today and even yesterday, and perhaps something like this has been set loose and/or killed.

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

[cpt kangarooski]

Because wasps evolved wings, while ant's evolved apostrophes. It's a miracle of nature.

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

[L7_]

Its not that people haven't been trying to emulate the behavior of insect swarms such as ants, beetles or bees for thousands of years its just that, like most current problems in science, the technology is just now matching up to the complexity of the problem.

The mathematical techniques are just being formed to handle these types of problems, based mainly on the numerical research that has been done in recent years.

So, I would say its more interesting that modern science is now capable to actually be wise from considering the ants ways, rather than someone conjecturing about being wise by thinking about the ants ways.

P.S. Proverbs havent been around for 'thousands of years', more like 16 to 17 hundred.

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.

Re:Proverbs 6:6

[gwernol]

"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. ;-)

Actually there is a long and fascinating history of research into swarm/colony intelligence in ants, from the groundbreaking work of EO Wilson to the more recent work of Deborah Gordon whose insights into the relationship between ant colonies as single organisms and the way that human intelligence emerges from the biology of the brain are startling. The study of ants and colony behavior is an exciting field that can inform many fields from weather systems to crowd behavior to artificial intelligence.

A more in-depth introduction...

[The Beezer]

by Tony White can be found here.

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."

Michael Crichton - Prey

[bwhaley]

Or, for a lighter read, try Prey by Michael Crichton. Excellent novel, though not quite as good as some of his previous work (Timeline, anyone?).

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

Insect Routing

[tedDancin]

I'm sorry, there are too many flaws in this system for it to be practical. DOS attacks could be carried out in numerous ways. One way to grind all traffic to a halt would be to throw in a stray peanut butter sandwich packet.

I can see it now: a potential attacker who only needs a can of insect repellent..

business problems?

[Joe the Lesser]

Hey Boss, we're not gonna make the deadline.

Boss: How about if I give you five thousand deadlines! ...I guess it would be a good motivational tool...

Resistance is futile

[ekarjala]

If this guy were a trekkie, he'd know the endpoint of his research leads to the Borg...

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.

The Island Of Dr. Bonabeau

[HarveyBirdman]

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."

For example, unleashing your army of carnivorous wasps to eat key performers at the competition.

Manager 1: "Where's Engineer Bob? He's supposed to finish project X-12 this week."

Manager 2: "He got eaten by carnivorous wasps."

Manager 1: "Wow. Sucks to have been him. Hey, that leaves us free for golf after lunch."

Manager 2: "Oh, right on, old boy!"

some cool links

[rnd()]

be sure to check out:

The Swarm Development Group

SFI

Complex Systems

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.

Re:What about Genetic Algorithms?

[aluminum boy]

Genetic algorithms are generally based upon successive "generations" ("iterations", "repeats" whatever) where different portions of algorithms compete. The "winning" sections of algorithms advance further. Swarms, though, are based on a very small set of unchanging ideas. Those simple ideas, when multiplied over thousands of organisms, takes on a whole (swarm) picture. That being said, some swarm programs can be made genetic... those simple assumptions/ideas are pitted against one another.

Mythical man month

[MxTxL]

I got to thinking about this real quick and, as i'm too lazy to read the actual interview and it's probably addressed there, what are the effects of diminishing returns?

The 'mythical man month' basically says that one programmer (or other worker) can produce more in one month than two workers each working half a month... who can do more than three workers all in 1/3 of a month. And further that just throwing more people at a problem doesn't really do much past a certain point. For some problems, it might be the case that one guy working for a month can do more than ten guys working for the same period of time.

How does swarm behavior overcome all of this great stuff?

I presume that it must be an essential part of the deal that the problem must be something very trivial for there to be great effects by swarming.

Re:Mythical man month

[mmol_6453]

The mythical man month works as a concept because of the problems caused by the division of work.

For example:

• He can't optimize his task list over a long, flexible schedule.
• He has to explain the things he's done to the people after him.
• It takes time to be "in the zone," and the people after him have to spend that time all over again.

These things only occur to complex agents, like people. The idea behind swarm behavior is that the agents are simple, and need not individually perform complex tasks.

Boy, I don't like what that says about me as a Slashdot addict. :)

Re:Mythical man month

[Jerf]

Context, context, context.

Programming right now is an activity that requires huge amounts of context to produce good output. Just being distrubed can cost big. Splitting the context in half will cost, it will not benefit.

Programming is an extreme problem, though. Some things, like "getting from here to there" requires much less context. You routinely set out on journeys with incrediblely incomplete amounts of knowlege regarding the conditions of your path. Sometimes you end up taking alternate routes because of obstructions. Compared to the amount of context maintained while programming, you set off to your destinations almost blind.

Only some problems can be "swarmed", mostly where there's some form of reinforcement that can be used. "Getting from here to there" is a great, obvious example of that, with the phermone trails reinforcement. On the other hand, the whole point of programming and its great attaction to me is the desire to never do the same thing twice, almost the exact opposite kind of problem. ("The number one sin of programming is code duplication." - me.)

Re:Mythical man month

[cmburns69]

The analogy of 10 men working each for 1/10 of a month is not accurate. If you have 10 men working each for 1/3 of a month, the overall time (not parallel) it takes will be less than that of 1 man for 1 month.

This only works if each swarming entity is not important (or expensive) by itself.

An online Starcraft RPG? Only at

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.

Sounds like I know what Michael Crichton reads...

[dgrgich]

Now I know where Michael Crichton got the idea for 'Prey'. In that book, Crichton writes about a scientist that applied swarm intelligence in his work. Unfortunately, the bad guys applied his theories to nanites that like to feast on human flesh.

Having written the above, I still can't believe I read the whole book.

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.

Dr. Evil

[airrage]

I remember with retrospective anguish my holidays in the south of France, when picnics turned into nightmarish fights against carnivorous wasps...

Ah, yes, those horrible days and nights writing poetry as child in the South of France. Sometimes Reginald wouldn't bring my water chilled, so I had to berate him. In the summer we made meat helmets! ~Peace out, Airrage.

Dirk Gently Navigation

[Black Copter Control]

This reminds me of the Dirk Gently Navigational techniques.

Follow someone who looks like he knows where he's going.. You may not end up where you want to be, but chances are you'll find your way somewhere interesting.

Me and my friend actually did that, arriving in Vancouver at 4:00AM. We followed a few random people to strange places (We stopped following the armed car when we figured that they might be getting a bit nervous). Befere long, we ended up in front of a Dennys. We stopped for breakfast/supper and then called Peter for directions to his place.

Tried it a few times since then -- as long as you've got a little time to spare, you can find some very interesting things about the place you're in.

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.

Emergence

[Will_uk]

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

Re:Emergence

[Mac Degger]

Heh...you might want to check out /.'s review of the book. Make no mistake, I read it, too, and it's an interesting read...if you're new to the subject.
But for more in-depth stuff, check out "Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems (Santa Fe Institute Studies on the Sciences of Complexity)" by Bonabeau and collegues, or Douglas Hoftadter's website (and book "Godel, Esher and Bach"), which are a bit more technical than "Emergence"'s pop-science take on things.

Re:I've heard about swarm intelligence....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if there's swarm intelligence, there's bound to be swarm stupidity.

(With apologies to Sidney Harris)

Erm, is this thinking new?

[tarquin_fim_bim]

What is open source after all? Don't think the system would quite work a business model, but for like minded volunteers it's already up & running.

I can't belive I'm quoting a shirt...

[superspoon]

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people on large groups"

Re:p2p apps

[deflood]

Like Swarm Radio

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

Been there Done That

[Herkum01]

This happens all the time in the business world. Any attempt at a new thought, in particular meetings, will be met with vile and a scorn, right before they they beat you to death with the conference room phone. It is a sort of a mindless action that is drilled into people in corporations in much the same manner as wasps or bees. Attack anything that threatens the stability of the nest!

So I guess this just proves, "The Future is already here!"

Swarm Intelligence: The book

[Jouni]

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

Interesting subject but...

[Mika_Lindman]

" applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world."

Is it just me, or did the whole subject get incredibly borint in that last sentence? There was things like "swarm intelligence" and "carnivorous wasps", which sound all cool, but then you start talking about businessa.. zZz..

Include something like "using this for world domination" or "free pr0n", and I would absolutely read the article!

Prior Art

[Jerf]

Hopefully this 3000+ year old prior art will prevent somebody from taking out a stupid patent!

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.)

Ah, yes... but...

[Dog and Pony]

... the mythical man moth can handle working in swarms and get more work out.

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.

Re:I've always wondered about this

[cyberon22]

Try http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pshyu/engnews/e ngnews.html

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.