[tt] [NSG] Meeting Announcement

Tue Oct 16 16:23:15 UTC 2007

----- Forwarded message from Fred Hapgood <hapgood at pobox.com> -----

From: Fred Hapgood <hapgood at pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:44:08 -0400
To: nsg at marshome.org
Subject: [NSG] Meeting Announcement
X-Mailer: MessagingEngine.com Webmail Interface
Reply-To: Nanotechnology Study Group <nsg at marshome.org>

Meeting notice: The 071016 meeting will be held at 7:30 P.M. at the
Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of
Main St. and Mass Ave.  If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the
manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below.

Suggested topic:  Have genetic algorithms found their their killer app?

Attacking machine learning with the techniques of natural selection (an
idea called, depending on details, genetic algorithms, genetic
computation, genetic programming, evolutionary computation, and
evolutionary algorithms) has for decades been one those ideas that seem
perfectly plausible on their face but have never quite got out of the
laboratory.

Certainly part of the problem is that the software side of the concept
is so labor intensive, at least to date.  The environment, the
replicator, the fitness function(s), and the crossover scheme all have
to be written custom for every single case.  Presumably eventually
someone will figure out a general logic that will make it quicker and
therefore cheaper to design useful replicators in relevant environments,
but that day doesn't appear likely to dawn anytime soon. (Nor does it
help that the technology requires immense volumes of computation, though
obviously that end is growing more tractable.)

However the logic of the general idea is attractive -- the existence
proof that is nature couldn't be more inspiring -- and R&D on the
technique has never ceased.  This summer speakers at The Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation Conference in London showed off memory sticks
with an advertised lifetime "up to" (whatever that means) 30 times that
of current technology, superior racing- yacht keel designs, ultra-high-
capacity optical fibers, cochlear implants that optimize to individual
patients, and a cancer-biopsy analyzer that performed at the level of  a
human pathologist.

How impressive this all is we can have no idea without some estimate of
the overall long-term costs of each project compared to those of
developing the same technology with human engineers. The papers are not
online (yet) so there is no simple way of answering that question.

Perhaps the most interesting paper was by John Koza of Stanford, a
pioneer in the technology. His team developed an antenna for a client
reluctant to pay the license fee to the entity owning the patent of the
only technology appropriate to the function.  Koza's algorithms evolved
a design that not only was different enough to give the client
confidence he would prevail against an infringement suit --- or more
accurately, dissuade the patent-holder from even writing a cease letter
-- but, as a bonus, actually worked better than the patented technology.

What is interesting about this story is not the solution but the
problem: using algorithms to dodge the increasingly oppressive patent
regimes of the culture.  Beating a patent is a lower bar than most R&D
projects -- you don't have to be better, or dramatically original, just
different, and genetic algorithms come up with different designs
automatically, because they think differently than we do.  Plus, patents
come in a highly standardized language that might give an engineer
writing a genetic algorithm a head start, perhaps an important head
start. Finally, knowing how much money you hope to get away with not
paying gives managers a clear idea of what to finance and what not,
which is always useful.

The only defense an IP holder would have would be to buy the best
evolutionary computing technology he can and then patent its outputs as
fast they appear. Something like this might work in some cases -- though
it is not hard to see why it won't, where it won't.  

Bound to be good for the companies selling the technology, though.

<+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+>

In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the
moon.

                                -- Jules Verne, 1865

<+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+>

Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

<+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+><+>

Legend:

"NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group.  The Group meets on the
first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which
refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little
else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a
sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg'  to
majordomo at polymathy.org.  Unsubs follow the same model.

Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to:
nsg at pobox.com. www.pobox.com/~fhapgood   www.pobox.com/~fhapgood

www.pobox.com/~fhapgood
www.BostonScienceAndEngineeringLectures.com

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