The Evolution of Emergent Computation
Dr. Melanie Mitchell
Director, Adaptive Computation Program
Santa Fe Institute
12:05 pm Wed. Oct. 26 in 1313 Sterling Hall
Jointly with the Chaos and Complex Systems Seminar
How does evolution produce sophisticated emergent computation in
systems composed of simple components limited to local interactions?
In this talk I will describe a model of such a process, in which a
genetic algorithm was used to evolve cellular automata to perform
computational tasks requiring globally-coordinated information
processing. A number of quite sophisticated novel computational
strategies was discovered. I will analyze the emergent logic
underlying these strategies in terms of information processing
performed by ``particles'' in space-time, and describe in detail the
temporal mechanisms by which the genetic algorithm discovered these
strategies. This analysis is a preliminary step in understanding the
general mechanisms by which sophisticated emergent computational
capabilities can be automatically produced in decentralized
multiprocessor systems.