Post ArSgSGFjPtCVFjTuca by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #ArSdaPr1IpyfU97UJM by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T00:59:33Z
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If you want to make a program that makes choices like a living thing. Model it after a living thing. Obviously, modeling a human mind would be hard, but what about an ant doing one task? Lots of people have done this, mostly focusing on large numbers of automata following very simple rules. Dead simple rules. Too simple.Ants are pretty complex. For one thing they have "emotional states" or if the word "emotion" bothers you, you can call it "a persistent condition that influences choices." 1/
(DIR) Post #ArSdslYFN78lzT5Z2m by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T01:02:52Z
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Ants, at minimum, can be "alarmed" or "scared" to one degree or another. This changes how fast they move and how likely they are to attack. Ants can be more or less cautious and this is correlated to the size of their colony. The bigger the colony the more bold the ant.Just having ants seek food and lay trails after finding food isn't enough to get the kind of complex emergent behaviors you see from real colonies. Give your digital ants "emotions."2/
(DIR) Post #ArSe0kBgKKD84pL25w by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T01:04:19Z
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But that is not all. They also need memories and the ability to learn by association.And lastly, they need persistent, but changeable goals.We seem to be delighting in wasting processing power, I see no reason not to really dig in and try to model some ants and see what emerges.3/3
(DIR) Post #ArSe7EQonDBDcBVnV2 by whknott@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T01:05:25Z
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@futurebird "Thresholds" perhaps, if you wish to keep it in computational terms. It does sound like an activation energy equation.
(DIR) Post #ArSekHfOhMMEwTx7qK by picofarad@noauthority.social
2025-02-25T01:12:32Z
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@futurebird professor Adrian Thompson University of Sussex; Evolutionary Algorithms.Do you program?
(DIR) Post #ArSf2IGBEOt7zjkG7E by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T01:15:45Z
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@futurebird I'm pretty sure I sent you this before, but in case I didn't:https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2313/Ant-Colony-Optimization#AntColonyOptimization It's a real thing ... pheromones, trails, etc.
(DIR) Post #ArSfGfoMSse95laday by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T01:18:24Z
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@AlgoCompSynth Yeah I've read this book. It's more about trying to isolate the few simple rules that produce solutions in systems with multiple agents. And avoiding making those agents individually "needlessly" complex. It's what made me wonder what if you didn't focus on that and tried to make the ant agents more ... like real ants.
(DIR) Post #ArSfpal1FNNVYLg2Sm by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T01:24:40Z
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@futurebird As far as I know the people working in this area - meta-heuristics for complex optimization - mostly use methods derived with computer science / discrete math, rather than by modeling living organisms or colonies of them. They have test sets and competitions just like the AI folks do.https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/metaheuristics/
(DIR) Post #ArSgLT21VT5IrIpWIy by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T01:30:27Z
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@AlgoCompSynth It is perhaps pragmatic to boil down the few essential rules that help ants be efficient. But, I've always been curious about "life like" models. Because all of these creatures we kind of hope are "simple" ... aren't.
(DIR) Post #ArSgSGFjPtCVFjTuca by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T01:31:40Z
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@futurebird How many neurons does a worker ant's nervous system have?
(DIR) Post #ArSj7m0ITIM5VZBUHo by skry@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T02:01:34Z
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@futurebird I worry this kind of system could beget the drone swarms of our nightmares. OTOH I would probably like an ant search algorithm result.
(DIR) Post #ArSko6s9NAbaLc7pD6 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T02:20:28Z
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@AlgoCompSynth They have rather large brains among insects given their body size, although bees beat them by a little. They have from 100,000 to 350,000 neurons. Ant size and the size of the eyes are a big factor.
(DIR) Post #ArSl8yeP8UTwvhe7RA by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T02:24:13Z
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@futurebird So 350K neurons times the number of ants in the foraging group - that's in the millions of neurons, I think. That does seem more efficient than a meta-heuristic.
(DIR) Post #ArSqRbz888WruF2s08 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-02-25T03:23:38Z
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@AlgoCompSynth Some colonies have... millions of ants.
(DIR) Post #ArSqZwT5rF5xkb25LM by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-02-25T03:25:01Z
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@futurebird But not all are foraging at any one time, which is where the algorithms originally came from.