Bio-Reflective Architectures for Evolutionary Innovation

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Abstract

Computational reflection uses software architectures that are capable of self-modification at runtime. These systems have implementations between two extremes: procedural reflection, in which unlimited self-modification is available at the expense of infinite recursion; and declarative reflection, which uses pre-defined metrics to drive the self-modification and is hence limited in scope. Biological processes also exploit the concept of reflection, where natural selection drives the process of modification. The concept of a 'program' in computing has an analogy with an individual member of a species. The process of life is discretised into a series of autonomous systems, each of which creates modified versions of itself as offspring. This paper unifies the concept of computational reflection with biological systems via a new analysis of von Neumann's Universal Constructor. The result is a bio-reflective architecture that is capable of unconstrained self-modification without the problems of infinite recursion that exist in the computational counterparts. The new architecture is a blueprint for applications in Artificial Life studies, Evolutionary Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2016
PublisherMIT Press
Pages192–199
ISBN (Print)9780262339360
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Bibliographical note

Self-archiving of publisher's PDF not supported by the publisher.

Cite this