Embodiment of Evolutionary Computation in General Agents

Holland's Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems largely dealt with how systems, comprised of many self-interested entities, can and should adapt as a whole. This seminal book led to the last 25 years of work in genetic algorithms (GAs), and related forms of evolutionary computation (EC). In recent years, the expansions of the Internet, other telecommunications technologies, and other large scale networks, have led to a world where large numbers of semi-autonomous software entities (i.e., agents) will be interacting in an open, universal system. This development cast the importance of Holland's legacy in a new light. This paper argues that Holland's fundamental arguments, and the years of developments that have followed, have a direct impact on systems of general network agents, regardless of whether they explicitly exploit EC. However, it also argues that the techniques and theories of EC cannot be directly transferred to the world of general (rather than EC-spec...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: EC
• Authors: Robert E. Smith, Claudio Bonacina, Paul E. Kearney, Walter Merlat
• Keywords: EC 2000, ECommerce, Genetic Algorithms, Software Agents, Systems