Thank you for your response, Cymm.
On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 16:57:57 -0400 "CYMM" <cymm@trinidad.net> writes:
> First, biological coevolution benefits the genes - not the species
> (...it
> also tends to generate environmental complexity...)
But the carrier of the genes (as a species) benefits as well, as do
individual members of the species. At this moment, I am personally
benefitting from the preservations of genes which allow me to read and
think.
... conceivably,
> you
> could have memetic coevolution... but...
>
> ...that assumes that the timescales of the coevolving species are
> comparable... there's a big mismatch between rates of human memetic
> evolution
You're certainly right about the mismatch in rates of evolution, and
it's true that the EA's in the papers I linked to were written for the
purposes of evolving such things as sorting networks and job scheduling
programs which operate at computer speeds. But I'm not sure that the
rates of evolution must be the same in order for coevolution to take
place. For example, humans and bacteria evolve (biologically) at very
different rates, and yet if you look at the history of epidemics caused
by bacteria it's clear that coevolution between the bacteria and the
human hosts does take place--one reason is that susceptible humans die
off (as I said in one of my earlier posts, it's likely that some humans
would die as a result of having to contend with AI). Another reason is
that the bacteria evolve towards being less lethal to their hosts.
You might say that the difference in rates of evolution is greater
between humans (and other biological entities) and AI's than between
bacteria and humans. But we were discussing the AI's interaction with
the environment outside the computer or network of computers. Part of the
EA would include monitoring the outside environment and deciding on
desirable changes--it shouldn't matter to the AI if such changes in its
behavior towards these other organisms take place at a slower rate than
the AI's general rate of cognitive evolution.
Barbara
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