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In the beginning, part 1. Before 1923, the universe was thought to be static and eternal, unchanging and without beginning or end. Its size was likely just a few tens of thousands of lightyears across, with one large island of stars, our galaxy, the Milky Way. Discoveries showed us that the universe is much larger …
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Logical, not biological Evolution strategies, genetic algorithms, artificial neural networks—they’re all AI methods that were inspired by nature. But what about other methods that have nothing to do with the brain or natural selection, or anything of the sort. Today, we take a quick look at a few AI algorithms that are logical without imitating …
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Bits and brains and bots If we could look closely at every last cell in your brain, and learn enough to simulate them on a computer, would a detailed enough simulation of your brain think? Today, we talk about artificial neural networks—an AI method that is very loosely based on how biological brains work. A …
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Genetic algorithms and evolution on fast-forward The dorg, the latest batch of digital organisms, will one day be placed in a little world to work out their destiny. The notion is to try and coax them into becoming intelligent. They aren’t ready yet. There’s a bunch of coding that Brad has to finish first. In …
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Maybe, if they all work together… Last time we talked about how the dorg, the lab’s latest batch of digital organisms, are unlikely to be able to evolve into intelligence. This week, we talk about how they might be able to do it anyway. But first, we need to get them to cooperate. In fact, …
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How and why the dorg are doomed It seems like such a simple and obvious thing. Given that we can cause computer programs and the like to evolve and evolution is what gave us our intelligence, couldn’t we give a computer intelligence by letting it evolve? The experiment has been done, in project after project, …
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Of mice and men and minds We’ve been looking and different unusually clever creatures—ants, bees, crows, octopus, elephants, whales, sea otters, dogs, racoons and monkeys. Along the way I was hoping to figure out some general idea of how intelligence arises from the chaos that is our universe. I share what I’ve come up with …
Have you ever put something down, only to forget where you put it? Suppose you know for certain that you left whatever it is in your room. It will take a certain amount of time to search your room in order to find the thing. What if you can’t remember which room of the house …
Artificial life systems have a reputation for finding all sorts of obscure bugs in your code, no matter how rare or unlikely the conditions to cause the bug are. I’ve got an oddball one. It causes a run time error and shuts down the entire system, and it is an extraordinarily unlikely event, happening once …
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Monkey brain business Primates, from the littlest monkeys to the largest apes, have rather large brains for their size. They also have high neural density, meaning that they pack a large number of neurons into whatever size brain they have. With culture, tool use, and even the beginnings of language, we take a bit of …