Re: detritus from vFRIAM

Posted by Prof David West on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/detritus-from-vFRIAM-tp7597543p7597545.html

Nick,

People write software that self-modifies, learns to shape current actions based on the results of prior actions, clones itself in order to maximize its share of some limited resource (memory or processor cycles) vis-a-vis competing software.

This kind of software, once created and deployed, is entirely autonomous. Creators might send messages asking the software to execute a particular behavior, but such messages have no special status, they are just another part of the context to which the software responds. The field is called "evolutionary software."

To me, this is an example of a system, that once deployed, is autonomous and acting on its own behalf. It is not aware of any "goals of the whole" only its own will to "thrive."

Not sure if this satisfied your request.

davew

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, at 1:06 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I tried to post this on the vFRIAM chat, but wouldn’t “take”, so I am posting it here:

 

“Don't do this now, but …. as a favor to me, could you-guys devote some of your shaving time this week to the proposition: "No system ever acts on its own behalf."  My intuition is that whenever we investigate a system that appears to act in its own behalf, we will find that it is pursuing a goal that is short of the interest of the whole, but which will produce benefits to the whole because of some property of the world in which it acts.  I would love to hear a discussion among people trying to design a system that acts on its own behalf. Can someone come up with a simple example of such a system.” 

 

I grant you that the question is not clear.

 

Thanks,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

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