While searching for information about the Mitchell book to be published
in 2009
<http://www.amazon.com/Core-Ideas-Sciences-Complexity/dp/0195124413/>,
which was mentioned in passing by somebody in the last few days, I found
a paper by the same author that I enjoyed reading and that will probably
be of interest to others on this list.
The paper is entitled "Complex systems: Network thinking
<http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/%7Emm/AIJ2006.pdf>", and it was published in
_Artificial Intelligence_ in 2006. I'd guess that sections 6 and 7 may
be the starting point for the 2009 book. Section 6 explains three
natural complex systems: the immune system, foraging and task allocation
in ant colonies, and cellular metabolism. Section 7 abstracts four
fundamental principles that Mitchell argues are common to the three
natural complex systems described and to "intelligence, self-awareness,
and self-control in other decentralized systems."
The four principles are:
1. Global information is encoded as statistics and dynamics of patterns
over the system's components.
2. Randomness and probabilities are essential.
3. The system carries out a fine-grained, parallel search of possibilities.
4. The system exhibits a continual interplay of bottom-up and top-down
processes.
See the paper for some elaboration of each of the principles and more
information. It's available at
<http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mm/publications.html>.
-------------------------------------------
agi
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