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#1
02-24-2007, 05:42 AM
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Robots evolve communication, cooperation, and deception
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi...ull/2007/222/1
[ QUOTE ] Experts disagree over exactly when and how communication arose among social animals. Evolutionary biologists suspect that early communication may have developed as a way for closely related individuals to boost each other's chances for survival. Studying such evolution in the lab is practically impossible, however, because most socially sophisticated creatures, such as bees or monkeys, can take hundreds of generations to show substantial behavioral changes. . Enter the s-bots, robots fated to live, reproduce, and die within 2 minutes. Keller and company equipped these 15-centimeter-tall subjects with wheels, a camera, a ground sensor, and a virtual "genome"--a computer program that dictated their responses to their environment. Some of the robots also had blue lights they could turn on or off. The robots then entered a foraging environment consisting of a "food" source and a "poison" source. Robots that found food were "mated" with other successful robots: Their genomes were recombined into new programming for the next generation. Robots that didn't find food, or that found poison, saw their genomes vanish from the game... . During the course of 500 generations, or about a week, the robots evolved to use their blue lights to communicate. Some groups flashed them to tell others where the food was; other groups used them to warn of the presence of poison. As the tactic worked and the genomes of successful communicators survived, the robots became more and more efficient at foraging. . The researchers expected the lone bots to largely ignore each other. But they were surprised, says Sara Mitri, a graduate student involved in the experiment. Bots acting alone developed the same communication strategies, along with some strategies of deception. When surrounded by their kin, the incentive of trying to get their genome--or one similar to theirs--into the next round of the game kept the cooperation going. But when surrounded by "stranger" bots with dissimilar genomes, they flashed their blue lights far from food to sabotage the nonkin bots' chances for survival. "We did not expect that they would evolve such a sophisticated system of communication," says Keller. [/ QUOTE ] Extra periods added between paragraphs just to make it look spaced right. 
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#4
02-24-2007, 03:07 PM
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Re: Robots evolve communication, cooperation, and deception
[ QUOTE ]
A stunning confirmation of the viability of intelligent design. [/ QUOTE ] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
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#5
02-24-2007, 04:12 PM
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Re: Robots evolve communication, cooperation, and deception
[ QUOTE ]
A stunning confirmation of the viability of intelligent design. [/ QUOTE ] Fella, they weren't designed. They were given very simple instructions and then they "evolved" into communication as they randomly generated code and let it survive based on a standard of selection. In other words, if this kind of process creates thinking beings, then evolution can create humans.
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#6
02-24-2007, 04:29 PM
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Re: Robots evolve communication, cooperation, and deception
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] A stunning confirmation of the viability of intelligent design. [/ QUOTE ] Fella, they weren't designed. They were given very simple instructions and then they "evolved" into communication as they randomly generated code and let it survive based on a standard of selection. In other words, if this kind of process creates thinking beings, then evolution can create humans. [/ QUOTE ] I think his tryin to point out that all this happened under the auspicious of intelligent designers and hence it confirms that an intelligent designer could be responsible for life on earth. But of course no-one has ever suggested ID wasn't viable. Its problems are much worse than a simple lack of viability. chez
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