Artificial life
Based on Luc Steels (1995)
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Subject
• Study :
research and synthesis towards the artificial life domain
• Context :
limits of system expert
growth of computer power
cognition approach
Start point
• Scientific article :
« The Homo Cyber Sapiens, the Robot Homonidus Intelligens, and the ‘artificial life’ approach to artificial intelligence »
Luc Steels (1995)
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Luc Steels
• Specialized in the domain of artificial intelligence and artificial life applied to robot architectures and to the study of language
Fig 1. Luc Steels
Luc Steels’ background
• Studied computer science at MIT
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology – USA)
• Director of Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris
• Professor computer science at the University of Brussels
• Founded the VUB AI Laboratory (1983)
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Once upon a time…
evolution
After us ? Us
Homo Sapiens Homo
Erectus
?
Bionic man
Intelligent systems
Artificial life
Axes of discussion
• Bionic man or Homo cyber sapiens
• Intelligent systems or Robot Homonidus Intelligens
• Artificial life
Artificial Life
Bionic man
or Homo Cyber Sapiens
Homo Cyber Sapiens
• Intelligence evolving towards greater :
sophistication
power
• Homo Cyber Sapiens
↔ technological extensions of the human brain.
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Homo Cyber Sapiens
• Artificial brain extensions should mimic the operation of human neurophysiology.
Neural modeling is implemented in chips
• Artificial brain may be completely different from natural brain.
The build of bridges will establish data communication and processing.
History
• Brief History of Homo Cyber Sapiens/Post Humans.
• Mary Shelley : Frankenstein (1831)
• K.Eric Drexler (1980-1990) : Nanotechnology
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Evolution of Super Computer
Fig.1 Projection of supercomputer speed
•
Brain versus Super Computers Ian Pearson, Chris Winter & Peter Cochrane (1995)
Use Case
• Two Examples :
Artificial Life
Intelligent Systems or Robot Homonidus
Intelligens
Intelligent systems
• Cybernetic and Artificial Intelligence : already 50 years of experiment
• Many advantages for computer science
• A whole range of programs exhibit features of human intelligence
• But …
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Limits of Intelligent systems
• Steels : 3 strong limits of Intelligent systems
a ‘frozen intelligence’ and not an intelligent behavior
intelligence needs to be embodied
consciousness
First limit : frozen intelligence
• Expensive cost of construction
• Ephemeral validity
• Outdated by changes
• Expensive and unrealistic maintenance
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Second limit : lack of embodiment
• Knowledge systems :
disembodied intelligence
no direct link to the real world
• Intelligent behavior emerges from interactions
• Difficulties :
link between the real world and the system symbols
adaptation to unforeseen actions
Third limit : consciousness
• An intelligent system needs a sense of self and a conscience
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State of research in 1995
• No technological obstacle
• The real obstacle : the lack of a theory of intelligence
State of research in 2005 (1/2)
• Knowledge systems : example of ‘frozen intelligence’
• Case Based Reasoning use the last experience
• Multi-agent systems :
agents
environment
interactions
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State of research in 2005 (2/2)
• McCarthy (1995-2002) :
consciousness does not yet exist in intelligent system
Intelligent systems
emotions
sub consciousness introspection
consciousness
Artificial Life
The Artificial life approach :
Theoretical approach
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Historic (1/2)
“ ‘Intelligent machinery’ , It’s the birth of the concept of intelligent machines.”
1940 1948 1970 1980 1987 2005
Connectionism
John Conway
Alan Turing John Von Neumann Christopher Langton
cellular automat
first scientific conference devoted to A-life
game of life : simple system → complex self- organized structures
parallel, distributed processing, neural networks AI ↔ cognitive science
Historic (2/2)
• Game of life : illustration
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Definitions of A-life (1/2)
• Langton (1989) :
Artificial life (A-life) : study of ‘natural’ life by attempting to
recreate biological phenomena from scratch within computers and other ‘artificial’ media.
• Rennard (2002) :
Life : state of what is not inert.
Artificial life : field of research witch intend to specify the preceding definition.
Definitions of A-life (2/2)
• Doyne Farmer and d'A.Belin (1992) : A-Life as field of alive
An artificial life must :
be initiated by man
be autonomous
be in interaction with its environment
induce the emergence of behaviors
Optional :
capacity to reproduce
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Steels’ vision of A-life
• Dynamic system theory applied to Artificial Intelligence
• A-life → Unified theory of cognition
• Unified theory : explain the details of all mechanisms of all problems within some domain.
unified theory of cognition domain’s ↔ all cognitive behavior of humans.
experimental psychology could support such theories.
(Newell 1990)
Steels’ research path
• Two kinds of behavior expected :
differentiation : individual agent get specific task
recognition : make the difference between the member of the group and those which don’t.
recognition → emergence of language.
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Axes of research (1/2)
• Emergence of language (Steels & Kaplan)
Emergence of common sense
Adaptation to other agents
Axes of research (2/2)
• Autonomous robotic (Floreano)
Genetic algorithms with neural networks
Co-evolution
• Animat Approach (Meyer)
Synthesizing animal intelligence
Artificial Life
The Artificial life approach :
Experimental approach
Steels’ experimentation – 1995 (1/4)
• A complete artificial ecosystem
• An environment with different pressures for the robots
• Robots are required to do some work which is paid in energy
• Cooperation and competition with each other
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Steels’ experimentation – 1995 (2/4)
Fig 1. The ecosystem with the charging station, a robot vehicle, and a competitor
Fig 2. A robot vehicle
Steels’ experimentation – 1995 (3/4)
Environment Perception - Visual Perception Modules
Charging station, Competitors, Other robots
- Sensors
Light, Tactile
Behavior system
- Finding resources - Exploring
- Obstacle avoidance - Align on charging station - Align on competitors - Turn left/right, Forward, Retract, Stop
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Steels’ experimentation – 1995 (4/4)
• Interesting results :
Behavior diversification
Hard working gourp
Lazy group
Steels : something could emerge from the lazy group
Steel’s experimentation – 2001 (1/3)
• One speaker (S), one hearer (H)
• H tries to guess what S is talking about
• H guess wrong : correction (feedback)
• No explicit object designation : simple region pointing
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Steel’s experimentation – 2001 (2/3)
Fig 3. The talking heads experiment
Steel’s experimentation – 2001 (3/3)
• Interesting results :
Emergence of a shared word
Winner-take-all
Shared word repertoires after experiment
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Other kind of experimentation (1/2)
Floreano & al. (2004)
• Evolution of Spiking Neural Networks in robots
• Objective : Vision-based navigation and wall avoidance
Fig 4. A Khepera robot in a square
arena Fig 5. A Khepera robot
Other kind of experimentation (2/2)
• Interesting results :
Avoiding walls following with security distance
Biologically plausible connection patterns
Forward progression
Self adaptable speed : body adaptation
Artificial Life
Conclusion
Conclusion (1/3)
• 3 approaches
Bionic man : ethic problems
Intelligent systems : limits
Artificial life :
Tremendous possibilities
Involving many fields, biologically-inspired
Now a days the biological approach stay in progress.
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Conclusion (2/3)
• Lack of intelligence theory
• Problem of consciousness in robots
• Is language needed for intelligence ?
• Sufficient pressures for a new species ?
• Does performance gain means Intelligence gain ?
Conclusion (3/3)
“Intelligence is like life or cosmos; its such a deep phenomenon that we will still be trying to
understand it
many centuries from now.”
Luc Steels
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Homo Cyber Sapiens
• The Anatomical changes are defined by :
New sensory modalities.
• The Extreme ecological pressures are defined by:
Homo erectus
Homo Sapiens “wise man"
Homo erectus
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Homo Cyber Sapiens
• The human species is today under just as much stress as it must have been in the past,
Still Human Intelligence haven’t evolved !
• How realistic is the development of a Homo Cyber Sapiens ?
