Here is one example of AI at work. An experiment was done using evolutionary techniques to allow a computer to "design" a simple circuit, using logic gates as building blocks. The design goals for the circuit were simple, and the best design that engineers could come up with used about 14 "gates", the smallest components that engineers use in logic circuit design. In the evolutionary technique, a computer manipulated a sequence that served as the blueprint or DNA for the circuit, describing how the gates were to be connected. The computer could then test the resulting circuit, compare the results with the desired results, and rearrange the gates using "genetic algorithms" on the blueprint sequence, and try again, over and over. The computer was not programmed with any knowledge about how the gates function, or given any "intelligence" other than the relativly simple genetic algorithms (similar to gene crossover, etc). The resulting circuit took only 12 gates. Engineers couldn't figure out how it worked at first. What happened is that some of the gates ended up being fed intermediary voltages, in a way they weren't designed to operate, so they no longer operated like simple logic gates. So, the resulting design was "simpler" in needing fewer components -- but vastly more complex in understanding how it worked. No part of the design made much sense by itself. The circuit had to be analyzed as a whole, using much more complex techniques for circuit analysis than are needed for traditional logic circuits. |
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