ALIFE LIST: Artificial Life Research List Number 41 Wednesday, September 26 1990
 
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Contents:
 
                                Workshop in ML91

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Date: Wed, 26 Sep 90 14:30:23 PDT
From: abbott@itro3.aero.org (Russ Abbott)
Subject: Workshop in ML91

I am interested in proposing a workshop for ML91 (The Eighth
International Workshop on Machine Learning), but I do not know people
with whom to collaborate.  Is anyone on this mailing list interested in
developing a joint proposal?  Following is an draft description of my
ideas about a workshop.   The deadline for proposals is Oct 10, so we
don't have too much time.  The ideal workshop proposal will come from 
3 or 4 people from different institutions.

-- Russ Abbott@itro3.aero.org

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The workshop will examine the interplay among entities, an environment
within which they exist, and information that evolves for
controlling/directing/supporting their interaction with that environment
and how this interplay may result in machine (and other forms of)
learning.  Included among the questions of interest are:

	What sorts of entities and environments give rise to
	evolving information?   In particular:

		In what ways must entities depend on or interact with
		their environment that information matters at all?  
		How can one characterize the value/usefulness of
		information to entities?   Is information useful, for
		example, because it lets an entity conform to or
		perceive its environment more accurately?

		What sort of interface between entities and their
		environments allows for "learning,", i.e., the emergence of 
		"new" interactive capabilities?   E.g., sensitivity to light
		is a prerequisite to the development of vision, yet that
		sensitivity would not be one of the capabilities
		explicitly listed for entities that don't use it.   Or
		magnetism as a phenomena is prerequisite to the ability
		of some migratory birds to navigate using magnetic materials
		incorporated into their bodies.   Yet a sensitivity to
		magnetic forces is not one of the primitive properties
		of most entities.
	

	Within the context of entities, environments, and information,
	in what ways can "new" information come into being?  Genetic
	algorithms is one answer.

	In what ways do entities acquire information?   How are entities
	constructed that they may make use of or may be driven by 
	information or design?

	How are intentional and accidental information/design related?
	The information encoded in genetic code is presumably ad hoc and
	accidental in its effects.   Information in computer programs
	was presumably developed intentionally.  Is it useful to
	distinguish between these?


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