Computerworld
Quick Menu
Search



Ads by TechWords

See your link here


Subscribe to our e-mail newsletters
For more info on a specific newsletter, click the title. Details will be displayed in a new window.
Application/Web Development
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
More E-Mail Newsletters 
Computerworld 2007Subscribe to Computerworld
40 years of the most authoritative source of news and information for IT leaders.

Only the Strong Survive

Computing by Natural Selection
 

Sign up to receive Software Development Resource Alerts

July 22, 2002 (Computerworld) -- MELANIE MITCHELL
Position: Research computer scientist
Employer: Santa Fe Institute, a New Mexico think tank specializing in emerging science
Research interests: Intelligent systems and machine learning, complex systems, evolutionary computation and artificial life



Melanie Mitchell says computer scientists and biologists can learn a lot from each other. She's studying how natural systems perform computation, and she's using her findings to develop new kinds of computational methods. Mitchell recently told Computerworld's Gary H. Anthes how we can solve some complex problems by letting systems evolve solutions through a process of natural selection.
Melanie Mitchell, a research computer scientist at the Santa Fe Institute
Melanie Mitchell, a research computer scientist at the Santa Fe Institute
Is evolutionary computing beginning to move out of the academic realm? This whole field has really exploded recently. More and more people are using evolutionary methods to do real-world applications. Examples are factory job scheduling, supply chain optimization and automatic design of things like circuits.

What's driving this? People have learned how to exploit these methods better, and more and more people are getting interested in biologically inspired methods in computer science. And we have the kind of computer power to really use these algorithms on a much larger scale. They are very computationally intensive, and a lot of people are now looking at genetic algorithms implemented on a parallel computer or some large network of computers.

Is anything holding back even wider use of evolutionary computing? People don't understand very well what characterizes problems that evolutionary methods work well on. That's an open problem. There's some intuition, but no real formal analysis.

Nevertheless, what can you say about why this method is sometimes so effective? More and more people in the field of artificial intelligence are finding that if you want to create very complex computing systems that act intelligently or in lifelike ways, that's very difficult to engineer by hand. You have to let systems learn on their own. Evolutionary computing is one kind of machine learning; neural networks is another.

You're doing research in co-evolutionary computing. How does that differ from evolutionary computing? In machine learning, the traditional way you get a system to do what you want is you come up with a fixed set of training examples - examples of the problem it's going to be faced with. Then you try the system out on the training examples, and if it gets the right answer, it gets credit, and if it gets the wrong answer, it gets punished.
But in co-evolution, you actually evolve the training examples, and they evolve to be increasingly challenging. So you try to evolve test cases; you are generating them dynamically. Manufacturing systems could lend themselves to this, because
Continued...
1 | 2 | NEXT  



Print this Story Send Us Feedback E-mail this Story Digg! Digg this Story Slashdot this Story
Evolution via Genetic Algorithms
Only the Strong Survive
"Debian 5, Lenny, was due out at the end of the September. Whoops. There are still some last-minute details that..." Read more...
"Linux has had a hate/hate relationship with Broadcom. Linux users need Broadcom Wi-Fi drivers. Broadcom does a lousy job of..." Read more...
Read more Development posts or See all Blogs
Feds considering changes to H-1B application process in wake of report
Exploit code loose for six-month-old Windows bug
With market meltdown, which tech firms become predator or prey?
More top stories...
The Grill: Privacy is a thing of the past, says private investigator
Report: World Bank servers breached repeatedly
Apple asks judge to make iPhone lawsuit moot
Too much junk food, too little exercise and a 24/7 tether to technology? Your body ain't happy, friend. Let us count the pains.
Instruments on the surface of Mars have detected falling snow that is likely evaporating before it reaches the planet.
One positive development stemming from the collapse of Wall Street may be a boost in interest in computer science and IT careers among students who were previously interested in financial services jobs.
Getting new software installed on Linux doesn't have to be hard, but it can differ depending on what you're installing.
Reviews, analyses, how-tos, visual tours, hot issues and predictions about Microsoft's new OS.
Four years from now, the IT field will be a vastly different place. Will you be ready?
All Zones
Application Performance Zone
Business Continuity Zone
The File Data Management Zone
Security Management Zone
The SAS Zone
Business Intelligence and Analytics Zone
Windows Protection Zone
The Enterprise Search Zone
Software as a Service Zone
The Security Zone

Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Sold on SOA

(Source: Computerworld) It's the hot technology for most large companies, but business, technical and cultural issues must be addressed for a successful SOA implementation. Get the whole story, from the big picture to the how-to-do-it details, in this Executive Bulletin. Download this Executive Bulletin (a $49.95 value) for Free, compliments of Fujitsu.
Download this executive briefing download
Virtualization Everywhere
Download this white paper, free, compliments of Citrix.
(Source: Citrix) Adoption of virtualization is concentrated among large enterprises, while adoption by mid-sized companies has been much slower. For these companies, the cost and complexity of server virtualization solutions has been a barrier.

In this paper, we'll discuss how Citrix XenServer" provides simple, economical server virtualization for any size company. Download now!

Download this white paper go
From Laggard to Leader: Transforming the Data Center
From Laggard to Leader: Transforming the Data Center
Register for this complimentary webcast today!
Go to the webcast 
White Papers
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
Business Transaction Management: Facilitating the Management of Virtual Environments
Quick Sizing Guide for SAS Grid Running on HP BladeSystems and EVA Storage
Prudential Financial protects its brand with Symantec Data Loss Prevention solutions
View more whitepapers