Artificial Neural Networks Demonstrate the Evolution of Human Intelligence 107
samazon writes "Ph.D. students at Trinity College in Dublin have constructed an artificial neural network model to demonstrate the Machiavellian intelligence theory — that human intelligence evolved based on the need for social teamwork and indexing a variety of social relationships and statuses. (Abstract) The experiment involved programming a base group of 50 simulated 'brains' which were required to participate one of two classical game theory dilemmas — the Prisoner's Dilemma or the Snowdrift game. Upon completion of either game, each 'brain' produced 'offspring' asexually, with 'brains' that made more advantageous choices during the games programmed to have a better chance to reproduce. A potential random mutation during each generation changed the 'brain's structure, number of neurons, or the strengths of the connections between those neurons,' simulating the evolution of the social brain. After 50,000 generations, the model showed that as cooperation increased, so did the intelligence of the programmed brains."
The full paper is available.
Now... (Score:5, Funny)
Now *THAT's* intelligent design!
$Ducks
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I know you made a joke, but this right here is why believing in intelligent design and evolution etc are not necessarily incompatible with each other.
Re:Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you made a joke, but this right here is why believing in intelligent design and evolution etc are not necessarily incompatible with each other.
No, it is not. They are incompatible.
Intelligent Design comes in two forms. The first is when we admit that it is just a euphemism for creationism. In this case, the theory of evolution (as well as most of the field of archaeology) clearly contradicts the story of Genesis, thus rendering the two incompatible.
The second is the form in which ID, in an attempt to distance itself from religion, rests upon the principle of irreducible complexity. The basic idea is that certain constructs represented in nature today (the human eye is an oft-used example) would have been useless in a less-complex or less specific form, and thus these traits would not have evolved (a half-formed eye is an evolutionary disadvantage, a being is better off not wasting the calories keeping that useless tissue alive). Since these traits could not develop through incremental changes, some traits must not evolve, but must have been put there by some intelligent agent.
This second form is not so much a scientific theory as it is a fundamental misunderstanding of stochastic processes and the field of mathematical optimization. This form of ID is basically the claim that evolutionary optimization can never escape local optima to discover global optima - something a competent applied mathematician knows to be false.
Re:Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a third form you missed entirely, to which (I think) parent is referring. A situation where an intelligence creates the initial conditions necessary for life (in the case of the universe, the laws and parameters that govern it, or in a more local scale, the materials and conditions on the Earth that would bring about life in the end) which results in a "designed" life evolving on its own, as a consequence of those initial conditions, much like how this experiment outlines certain specific parameters that it hopes will bring about more advanced "brains".
Well, I think that is a possibility under ID anyways, I'm certainly not an expert on it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that is what I was alluding to exactly.
Re:Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent Design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design [wikipedia.org] . The very undirected process a hypothetical Deist god would set in motion (evolution) is specifically what Intelligent Design claims does not work.
It's not that evolution and religion cannot coexist - if I'm not mistaken, evolution even has the Papal seal of approval. They can. But intelligent design is not religion - it's a dogma pretending to be science. Only the form of pseudo-science they chose to make their defining point is so clearly refutable that they wind up with less credibility than if they had just gone with "faith" as their explanation.
Re: (Score:1)
The very undirected process a hypothetical Deist god would set in motion (evolution) is specifically what Intelligent Design claims does not work.
People who believe in both Intelligent Design and evolution, and also have some knowledge of the science behind evolution and natural selection, don't necessarily say that evolution on its own cannot produce the creatures that we see, but rather say that it is so statistically unlikely that it would have required the manipulation of probability by some intelligent deity to arrive at the results we have.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
but rather say that it is so statistically unlikely that it would have required the manipulation of probability by some intelligent deity to arrive at the results we have.
I either don't remember or haven't heard this version. They think it's more probable that a deity manipulated probability? While that doesn't sound scientific to me, I'm intrigued. Do you have a link I could start with (yes, I'll google it for myself, but you seem to already know of the idea.)
Re: (Score:2)
The very undirected process a hypothetical Deist god would set in motion (evolution) is specifically what Intelligent Design claims does not work.
People who believe in both Intelligent Design and evolution, and also have some knowledge of the science behind evolution and natural selection, don't necessarily say that evolution on its own cannot produce the creatures that we see, but rather say that it is so statistically unlikely that it would have required the manipulation of probability by some intelligent deity to arrive at the results we have.
But all the millions/billions/whatever times the evolution did not produce intelligent creatures we were not there to observe it. You don't know how many failed evolutions you haven't observed, so unlikeliness does not imply manipulation.
Re: (Score:2)
Intelligent Design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design [wikipedia.org] . The very undirected process a hypothetical Deist god would set in motion (evolution) is specifically what Intelligent Design claims does not work.
That's kind of like saying if you change things on a network later to make it work the way you want, that you didn't design it in the first place.
If Deism doesn't include the possibility of a fallible God that never changes his mind about things, that doesn't mean that ID doesn't. Yes, that may very well make ID incompatible with any number of religions, a controversy which I wholeheartedly endorse be taught in Tennessee schools.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh shut the fuck up. I'm saying there's a way for people to believe in both, not that I personally do. I think it's a whole bunch of horse-shit, personally... but I do respect the beliefs of others, which is why I try to find compromises such as this. News flash: the world is not black/white right/wrong correct/incorrect.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh shut the fuck up. I'm saying there's a way for people to believe in both
No, you shut the fuck up!
He wrote:
GOD IS POWER
He accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford were guilty of the crimes they were charged with. He had never seen the photograph that disproved their guilt. It had never existed, he had invented it. He remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories, products of selfdeception. How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except!
Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.
1984 [george-orwell.org]
Also, I really doubt this:
I do respect the beliefs of others
because I don't think you respect the belief of a [supposed] Muslim fanatic that blowing himself up together with a bunch of innocent people is a GoodThing(TM).
Re: (Score:2)
You quote fiction to back you up? Yea, OK.
Re: (Score:1)
It's times like this when I think about what I would say if a religious fundamentalist came up to me and asked me (and, yes, I know I have a tendency to over-dramatize my thoughts) "What has your precious science given you?" to which I would reply "Doubt."
Now here's where I get to how this involves your post; you seem awfully sure that there is no God - even to the point where you're claiming to know the intricacies of the universe to the extent that you can apparently claim to know every point in time from
Re: (Score:3)
This IS a possibility under what I would call "Weak Intelligent Design".
However, it is important to note that, in that context, Weak ID is not a direct competitor to evolution, it is a cause of it. Therefore, evolution becomes the only *scientific* mechanism for actual development of species (although a hypothetical deity could still decide to intervene directly). A Weak ID person may well then oppose this law because there is no scientific evidence for any other theory that describes how species emerge.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You only say that because you don't think you're going to come face to face with an actual deity.
For my part, I make it a point of respecting anything that can smite me so hard I taste the color blue, two weeks ago. Particularly since two weeks ago was very out of season for blues. I prefer a good taupe in the morning to go with my heaping portion of Dada.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thinking that way is entirely useless as a way of making scientific discoveries, but there is nothing that says science has to have the answers to *everything*.
But there is something (the Jaynes/Cox derivation of Bayes' rule, which depends only on a consistency condition) that says that if science doesn't have the answer, neither does anything else.
Re: (Score:1)
An example is Monsanto. They are semi-gods and semi-creators. And they have a lot of wrath.
Re: (Score:1)
that it hopes will bring about more advanced "brains"
Wouldn't it be likely that the the "intelligence", the Ph.D. students in this case, would tweak the parameters, or nudge the evolution in a particular direction. Or introduce a mechanism or object that might change the course of the evolution? I know I would if I were in their shoes, probably repeatedly if I had a desired outcome.
Any intelligence with the motivation and capability to kickstart a project like this is probably going to have the motivation and capability to interfere at some point. This star
Re: (Score:2)
That depends on the power you attribute to the creator. If you say that god is omnipotent and omniscient, it becomes unnecessary for him to nudge evolution along a different path, because he can order things so that they don't need a nudge. Humans have to tweak the parameters because we aren't omniscient, so we don't know what the results will be with a given set of parameters, but a creator would.
Obviously it is still possible for him to interfere if he so chooses, but he wouldn't need to for the natural o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I still remember the interesting theory that the "gods" were actually astronauts from other worlds. The evolution is still valid, but as Arthur C. Clarke would say, we may have "taken an evolutionary kick in the butt".
P.S: Google translation sucks. Do not worry about my terrible grammar
Re: (Score:2)
IANAL, but I do play Devil's Advocate on Slashdot from time to time. So forgive me, mods, if I criticise this criticism of ID. It should not be taken as a defense of the indefensible. But I just can let such sloppy logic go unchallenged.
Intelligent Design comes in two forms. The first is when we admit that it is just a euphemism for creationism. In this case, the theory of evolution (as well as most of the field of archaeology) clearly contradicts the story of Genesis, thus rendering the two incompatible.
There are many versions of creationism besides the Christian ones. You'll have to do better than that to prove incompatibility
This form of ID is basically the claim that evolutionary optimization can never escape local optima to discover global optima - something a competent applied mathematician knows to be false.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The ID propenents are on very solid ground in their belief that something as complex as an eye, a flagellum or the blood cl
Re: (Score:3)
The ID propenents are on very solid ground in their belief that something as complex as an eye, a flagellum or the blood clotting cascade could not evolve given that the partially formed proto-systems are useless.
Actually, their argument really reduces to "I don't see how the intermediate stages could be adaptive, so they weren't." But an interesting example appeared in the biological literature about a decade ago: A group of starfish called "brittle stars" (because of their hard surface made of silicate crystals) are in the very early stages of evolving a compound eye, and it's quite adaptive.
The critical part of this discovery is that their hard crystalline surface contains scattered lenses that focus incomin
Re: (Score:2)
Yes they are incompatible.
Re: (Score:2)
You are all missing the point.
There's no reason a deity could not create the tools/laws/conditions that cause life/evolution/etc to occur. Thus ID and scientific theories such as Evolution do not inherently conflict.
Re: (Score:2)
I know you made a joke, but this right here is why believing in intelligent design and evolution etc are not necessarily incompatible with each other.
They're not necessarily incompatible, but here's the thing: We know evolution is happening right now and has been happening since the first living thing existed because random mutation and natural selection of advantageous variants is an unavoidable consequence of living things reproducing or in fact anything reproducing.
We have no evidence that intelligent design is happening or ever happened.
The theory that explains everything by random mutation and natural selection is elegant and sufficient. Occam's
Re: (Score:2)
OK? I never said we knew. All I am doing is offering up the simple fact that they are not incompatible as-is. Everyone else, yourself included, is reading more into what I say than there is.
Re: (Score:2)
OK? I never said we knew. All I am doing is offering up the simple fact that they are not incompatible as-is. Everyone else, yourself included, is reading more into what I say than there is.
If everyone misunderstood you, the fault lies with you. You must not have said whatever it was you intended to express.
But not in ... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Beat me to it... DAMN!
Human intelligence ? (Score:2)
They had a whopping 20 neurons (nodes).
Wouldn't this be more like a model of insect intelligence, say from about 250 million years ago ? Maybe it could explain the evolution of bees.
Re:Human intelligence ? (Score:5, Funny)
Please reference previous comment. This clearly is designed to model intelligence in Tennessee. Now if we could just fast forward 50,000 generations...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You mean 200 generations, from 6000BC.
Re: (Score:3)
please account for inbreeding...
Re:Human intelligence ? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can go look at them - someone has been nice enough to digitise the entire nervous system, down to every last synapse. It's browseable at http://wormweb.org/neuralnet#c=BAG&m=1 [wormweb.org]
For the singulatity fans: Yes, this is almost the first full brain upload. It isn't quite, as it doesn't store synapse response data and the brain-map is actually a composite from multible individuals, but give it a couple more decades and one of the little worms may go down in history as the first naturally-occuring intelligence (If you can call it that) to make the transition to digital immortality.
Interesting consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
The experiment in question picked "games" that require cooperation to achieve best results. So naturally the paper would suggest that evolution favors cooperation.
Linking reproduction to cooperation might be a reasonable theory. Or not. But this experiment doesn't suggest anything other than "if we make cooperation an asset in our experiment, then cooperation will work better in our experiment".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The paper suggests that evolution favors cooperation but that it also favors low-cost solutions (i.e. lots of little dumb brains (ants) vs. singular powerful brains (humans)). ...
Are you saying that large complex brains (humans) can not and do not cooperate?
Well, they can, but not nearly as well as ants. ;-)
It has been pointed out that our planet has a much larger biomass of ants than of humans. By just about any measure of "success", ants are much more successful than we are. They are certainly more social.
Of course, we're all part of a biosphere that requires a wide variety of species. So picking one feature (biomass, IQ, habitat volume, flight speed, etc.) as the prime measure of success is somewhat beside the point. Neither we nor the ants has the
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying that I belive this, or that it's likely, but it's an i
Re: (Score:2)
It's an interesting result, my only doubt is that these sorts of models are so critically sensitive on (for lack of a better term) 'moral' assumptions built into the rules - that valuations of the results.
For the Snowdrift game, for example, if you do nothing while the other driver shovels, you 'win' with 300. If you shovel and the other driver doesn't, you still get 100. If you both shovel, you both get 200. So in a sense they 'bias' the game by rewarding you for accepting being exploited, you're just r
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
On Earth we call them "Republicans without birth-control" ;-)
Begging the Question (Score:4, Insightful)
So if we stipulate in our environment that smarter brains are more likely to reproduce, then the smarter brains reproduce just like would happen if human brains evolved to be smarter as a competitive advantage, so human brains evolved as a competitive advantage? They've stacked the dice to make evolution happen in their artificial world, so why should we make the inference that the world's dice are stacked in just the same way?
Re:Begging the Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, their paper is a tautology. Shorter paper: "We created a simulation of our rules. Then the simulation proved our rules."
Re: (Score:1)
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” -- Nikola Tesla.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, their paper is a tautology. Shorter paper: "We created a simulation of our rules. Then the simulation proved our rules."
Incorrect. They stipulated that brains that most successfully played the games were more likely to survive. They placed no artifical constraints on "smarter" (whatever that means). If neural networks becoming simpler over 50,000 generations of (getting better at co-operating)+(random mutations) were probable, it probably would have happened in the simulation. In fact, it might have, if any of the games had included the possibilty of self-sacrifice in addition to co-operate or not-co-operate.
Re: (Score:1)
Indeed. From the full text (jay, free to read! But frames, really?):
Not very sophisticated, if you ask me. More importantly, though:
So they've implemented a spe
Re: (Score:2)
They did incorporate a fitness penalty for the number of neurons, but that penalty was arbitrary, just like the whole model.
Can't be true ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Where the neurons "come from" is irrelevant, whether they sprang forth from the magic of the intelligent designer or were created through abiogenesis. What is relevant is that they reproduce with a mechanism for heredity.
Connections could be generated randomly and you will end up with the same result as long as you have heredity, mutation, and selection.
Where the r
Iterated prisoner's dilemma? (Score:2)
So did they evolve the optimal strategy of starting with cooperation then mirroring your opponent's last move? Because it's cooperative but you don't need many neurons for that.
Re: (Score:1)
Socialism ve Capitalism? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You are making the mistake of assuming that extant socialist systems are any thing like their idealized portrayal.
Re: (Score:2)
funny (Score:1)
Cave Johnson here... (Score:5, Funny)
Fact: The key to any successful cooperative test is trust, and as our data clearly shows, humans cannot be trusted. The solution: robots! Then, fire the guys who made those robots, and build better robots. Then, run those robots through a regimen of trust exercises, creating a foundation of mutual respect, reinforced by the simulated bonds of artificial friendship. Inspiring stuff. And finally, we put that trust to the test. Bam! Robots gave us six extra seconds of cooperation. Good job, robots. Cave Johnson. We're done here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZMSAzZ76EU [youtube.com]
unnecessary (Score:2)
Upon completion of either game, each 'brain' produced 'offspring' asexually
You don't say...
A bit of a deceptive title (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Every time a break through in AI is made, it gets taken out of AI.
I suspect that if I created an AI with a cat level intelligence, people would say the cat isn't intelligent.
Internet search was one considered an AI problem, the moment it was solved it was taken away from AI.
Many games have AI, but the moment they where created they where some how technical and not AI.
10 years ago what Siri does would have been considered AI.
Too many people put a mystical belief on top of intelligence. When you remove the m
Re: (Score:2)
Proof that war is STUPID! (Score:1)
With over 7 billion people working together... just think where we could go with intelligence. But we have ignorant politician and commanders in the way.... Why is that?
Re: (Score:2)
Because we happily vote them in, but never fire them.
The Problem with this Study (Score:3)
From a purely academic standpoint, however, it is a neat experiment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Then explain this, twatwaffle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus [wikipedia.org]
?:/
That, numbnuts, is called Wikipedia, which is oft billed as the "Encyclopedia anyone can edit," hence the questionable nature of its content.
Did you have a point? Perhaps, since you're obviously in opposition to my opinion, you can give some examples of real life situations in which all but a single variable are held equal?
Re: (Score:2)
... is the same problem pretty much every study has -- it's based on the concept of ceteris paribus, which does not exist in reality.
...unless you're trying to create artificial intelligences. Knowing the minimum number of generations it might take for a particular method to produce emergent increases in general intelligence would seem to be handy information in that case.
Re: (Score:2)
... is the same problem pretty much every study has -- it's based on the concept of ceteris paribus, which does not exist in reality.
...unless you're trying to create artificial intelligences. Knowing the minimum number of generations it might take for a particular method to produce emergent increases in general intelligence would seem to be handy information in that case.
How so? To me, all this proves is that, under controlled laboratory circumstances, "AI" will develop in the way you designed the experiment for them to develop.
Re: (Score:1)
All they've shown (Score:1)
Is a loose demonstration of plausibility of the Mach. theory.