Swarm Intelligence 219
elamdaly writes "Eric Bonabeau, Ph.D, a keynote speaker at the upcoming Emerging Technology conference, is a leader in the field of swarm intelligence and has focused on applying these concepts to real world problems such as factory scheduling and telecommunications routing. The concept itself is borrowed from nature; in this interview, that's where the conversation begins, with ants and other social insects. Dr. Bonabeau takes us from his childhood nightmares of carnivorous wasps to applying the theories of swarm intelligence to solving real problems in the business world."
We (Score:5, Funny)
No, 'We' did not (Score:1)
We do this all the time (Score:4, Funny)
We've found it works best when we all rush the intern at the same time. Down 'e goes! Ha! Whose nephew are you NOW?
Get his book (Score:4, Informative)
From Amazon [amazon.com]
Michael Crichton - Prey (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Michael Crichton - Prey (Score:3, Interesting)
I won't comment on the literary value of Crichton's novel, because I haven't read it. But less than a month ago, /. ran a story [slashdot.org] on Freeman Dyson's take on the science in the novel, which according to Dyson, was BAD.
While I agreed with Dyson that the nanotechnology-run-amuck theme of Prey, as he described it, was pretty silly, I wasn't reassured as to the essential harmlessness of nanotechnology. The swarming gray goo was probably designed to look fearsome in the inevitable movie, but there are subtler and scarier aspects to be considered.
On the other hand, the positive possibilities are off the imaginative chart too. What else is new?
Re:Michael Crichton - Prey (Score:3, Interesting)
This VERY well could be. I wouldn't have any idea. There is at least one code snippet in the book and I remember it being very vague and it certainly didn't add to the novel much. I'll be the first to admit that most of his novels aren't very accurate at all (Sphere, Congo, Andromeda Strain). I think Timeline is one exception. His books are very entertaining, at least in my opinion, and he still puts in a lot of research. He just has to spice it up a little for entertainment's sake. It is a fiction, after all
Ben
Better alternative: (Score:1)
Re:Get his book (Score:2)
Emergence (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Emergence (Score:3, Informative)
But for more in-depth stuff, check out "Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems (Santa Fe Institute Studies on the Sciences of Complexity)" by Bonabeau and collegues, or Douglas Hoftadter's website (and book "Godel, Esher and Bach"), which are a bit more technical than "Emergence"'s pop-science take on things.
Re:Get his book (Score:2)
Or maybe not.
Re:Get his book (Score:1)
in related news... (Score:3, Funny)
swarming behaviour (Score:3, Informative)
Ever since Adam Smith. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not just that:
Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" was exactly swarm intelligence emergent behavior: A large number of humans applying simple rules of self-interest organize large movements of capital goods into the production of more-desirable products by sending each other simple price signals.
Simiar comparisons might be made to the success of voluntary vs. totalitarian governmental systems, the free software movement, the explosion of network applications, and a number of other "less control gives better results" situations.
I think Dr. Bonabeau might find it useful, when trying to sell his ideas to administrators, to bring up these comparisons. Successful administrators and decision-makers already have a solid understanding of these concepts, so speaking in these terms should be immediately accessable.
Imagine going to a non-pointy-haired business exec or a conservative politician: Will he more quickly grasp an argument couched in terms of ants, or in terms of free markets?
Heck: Even central-control systems (such as bureaucracies and military staff command) work by giving only broad directions and letting the subordinates use their own intelligence (and local incentive structures) to work out the details. A fundamental lesson in officer training works as follows:
- Instructor gives the new second louies a platoon, a sergant, and a tent. Tells 'em to try to direct the men to pitch the tent.
- Each second louie tries to micro-manage the tent-pitching, with disastrous results.
- Then the instructor shows 'em how it's done:
"Sergant! (points to spot on ground) I want that tent pitched HERE!"
Then he goes away and lets the sergant handle it.
(Of course the sergant, in turn, passes the order on with only slight elaboration, maybe assigning labor division or providing feedback if somebody's slacking or screwing up. But mostly he lets the men, in turn, apply their own brains and brawn to doing their own pieces of the tent-raising.)
Keynes (Score:2)
Keynes had some significant insights - many of which can be expressed as "if you screw around with the negative feedback loop you can make the output jump wildly". (Unfortunately, only temporarily, while it both makes the system unstable, unresponsive to real signals, and susceptable to long-term saturation in the direction opposite that you tried to drive it.)
The long run iddn't matter to him - he's the one who said "In the long run we're all dead." Perhaps appropriate for someone (like Keynes) who neigher had nor desired children. But leaving the later generations holding the bag is not my preferred economic policy - especially when I, and you, are the later generations. B-)
I prefer the Chicago School. Their models seem to work a lot better than those of the Keynesians. They take into account decision-making with less than perfect information (due to the cost of information, the time cost of processing it, errors, and the cost of correcting errors). This seems especially appropriate for swarm modeling. And their bias is toward spreading the wealth by making so much more of it (through technological improvement and exponential growth) that necessities and the fancy toys get cheap - even if it means more toys in the hands of nerds like us who invent or make them (or Bill, who DOES satisfy a lot of peoples' wants even if non-ideally B-) ) than in the hands of those with the fewest.
[Keynes] showed that the end result of swarm behaviour can be distinctly sub-optimal [...] The general point is that while the swarm will do surprising things given the limitations of their interactions, what they do could often be improved upon.
No argument there. The trick is to set up the rules for interaction so the individual biases of the swarm members (which are mostly hard-wired and not subject to gross adjustment, no matter how hard socialists try) drive the swarm to prosperity.
it's quite possible (indeed normal) for the economy to reach equilibrium without full employment.
"Full employment" is optimal? Without euthenizing the unemployable and untrainable? No, thanks. Body-beautiful utopias are right out for me - especially since I'm no Aryian Superman, while my wife has significant medical problems.
I'll settle for a significant fraction living lives of leisure on previous earnings, temporarily unemployed while switching jobs or hunting (but not starving and homeless meanwhile), charity due to truly incurable issues, or incarcerated for chosing to steal other people's stuff when they could have taken charity.
The man's a genius... (Score:5, Funny)
Guess he won't be giving the RIAA a call anytime soon, eh?
Re:The man's a genius... (Score:2)
Hmm, insects.. a blueprint for a deadly worm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmm, insects.. a blueprint for a deadly worm? (Score:1)
is not the true Tao, until
Curious yellow
Re:Hmm, insects.. a blueprint for a deadly worm? (Score:2, Funny)
p2p apps (Score:2, Troll)
Re:p2p apps (Score:2, Troll)
Re:p2p apps (Score:2, Informative)
Prey (Score:3, Interesting)
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Prey (Score:2)
Re:Prey (Score:2)
Wow...am I glad I'm not you.
Proverbs 6:6 (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering how that's been around for thousands of years, interesting that no one's really done much about it until now. Maybe no one thinks they're a sluggard.
Re: Proverbs 6:6 (Score:2, Interesting)
> "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise."
Also, "Go to the Ant" is the name of a famous paper on swarm computing from several years back, which can be found if you google [slashdot.org] for the phrase.
So it turns out that "go to" isn't always considered harmful.
Re:Proverbs 6:6 Links (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Ants in Plan [gospelcom.net].
2. To Be Like The Ant [cocn.org].
3. How Strong Is the Ant [doesgodexist.org]: "Ants have many lessons to teach us. The power of unity and cooperation, the importance of the wise use of resources, the value of keeping busy and not wasting time, and the incredible wisdom built into the design of all living things. 'Go to the ant, thou sluggard; condider her ways, and be wise:' (Proverb 6:6)."
Re:Proverbs 6:6 (Score:1)
Re:Proverbs 6:6 (Score:4, Insightful)
Its not that people haven't been trying to emulate the behavior of insect swarms such as ants, beetles or bees for thousands of years its just that, like most current problems in science, the technology is just now matching up to the complexity of the problem.
The mathematical techniques are just being formed to handle these types of problems, based mainly on the numerical research that has been done in recent years.
So, I would say its more interesting that modern science is now capable to actually be wise from considering the ants ways, rather than someone conjecturing about being wise by thinking about the ants ways.
P.S. Proverbs havent been around for 'thousands of years', more like 16 to 17 hundred.
Prior Art (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Proverbs 6:6 (Score:4, Informative)
Considering how that's been around for thousands of years, interesting that no one's really done much about it until now. Maybe no one thinks they're a sluggard.
Actually there is a long and fascinating history of research into swarm/colony intelligence in ants, from the groundbreaking work of EO Wilson [amazon.com] to the more recent work of Deborah Gordon [amazon.com] whose insights [paweekly.com] into the relationship between ant colonies as single organisms and the way that human intelligence emerges from the biology of the brain are startling. The study of ants and colony behavior is an exciting field that can inform many fields from weather systems to crowd behavior to artificial intelligence.
Re:Proverbs 6:6 (Score:2)
Diamond Age, and the Queen of the Ants (Score:2)
There were many examples of swarm intelligence in the book, Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. Since it's been several months since I've picked it up, pardon any inconsistencies.
The "toner wars" were about the release of billions of self-powered nanobots, and the breath-choking dust composed of useless black nanojunk that remained when all those nanoscopic power cells gave out.
Physical security systems were made up of larger microbots that could cooperate to generate an ad-hoc physical barrier to human-scale intruders.
Today's TCP and tomorrow's untrackable but reliable data transactions were explained as a mesh of dumb routers that continued to attempt knowledgeless hand-offs to other routers.
The Drummers were a sex-driven subculture who regularly and ritually exchange body fluids in the primal way, and thus exchange viral portions of larger computations to complete a batch process. One character discovers that mass computing facility and uses it to "crack" and backtrack such an encrypted routeless transaction.
But about ants... the protagonist little girl's AI-driven "book" develops a fable character to illustrate the concept of swarm intelligence to the girl. I liked how the Queen of the Ants explained that ants have two numbers: some and none. Some is anything above around a million, and anything less than that is functionally equivalent to none.
Re:Proverbs 6:6 (Score:3, Interesting)
Under the guise of enlightenment, so many people are willing to tell you that the Bible is worthless and meaningless. Yet few of them will tell you to go read it yourself, and make your own decision. As one of the most enduring and popular works of literature in existence, it certainly deserves a read-through by anyone.
The popular media and culture encourages you to scoff at the Bible and those who read and believe it. Ask yourself this: are you being brainwashed to discount the Bible, without ever reading it yourself? Why should you accept at face value everything the mass media wants to tell you?
In your new Bible study, I suggest that you read the Old Testament and New Testament as what they are: a description of events in a "before and after" relationship. People claim the Bible is full of vengeance against unbelievers, bloody wars, and hatred; it is, and that's part of how life was in the Old Testament days. The New Testament describes a very different approach of peace and forgiveness.
A more in-depth introduction... (Score:5, Informative)
Smart Dust (Score:3, Interesting)
http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDus t/ [berkeley.edu] u st/ [berkeley.edu]
http://www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu/~warneke/SmartD
Re:Smart Dust (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Smart Dust (Score:1)
Freenet (Score:5, Interesting)
Insect Routing (Score:2, Funny)
I can see it now: a potential attacker who only needs a can of insect repellent..
I've always wondered about this (Score:1)
Re:I've always wondered about this (Score:3, Informative)
Proof... (Score:1)
business problems? (Score:4, Funny)
Boss: How about if I give you five thousand deadlines!
Resistance is futile (Score:2, Funny)
Hacker and the ants. (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like the ant analogy mentioned in the article, the ants were used for their collective ability to help build the smartest AI source. Again I recommend the read.
The Island Of Dr. Bonabeau (Score:4, Funny)
For example, unleashing your army of carnivorous wasps to eat key performers at the competition.
Manager 1: "Where's Engineer Bob? He's supposed to finish project X-12 this week."
Manager 2: "He got eaten by carnivorous wasps."
Manager 1: "Wow. Sucks to have been him. Hey, that leaves us free for golf after lunch."
Manager 2: "Oh, right on, old boy!"
Borg (Score:1)
some cool links (Score:5, Informative)
The Swarm Development Group [swarm.org]
SFI [santafe.edu]
Complex Systems [umich.edu]
Next thing you know... (Score:1)
What about Genetic Algorithms? (Score:2, Interesting)
Note the words: "computationally expensive".
A.
Re:What about Genetic Algorithms? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about Genetic Algorithms? (Score:2)
Swarms, though, are based on a very small set of unchanging ideas.
But if you take any number of these ideas, and add them together, it makes a new idea. In this way it is like genetic algorithms.
Mythical man month (Score:5, Insightful)
The 'mythical man month' basically says that one programmer (or other worker) can produce more in one month than two workers each working half a month... who can do more than three workers all in 1/3 of a month. And further that just throwing more people at a problem doesn't really do much past a certain point. For some problems, it might be the case that one guy working for a month can do more than ten guys working for the same period of time.
How does swarm behavior overcome all of this great stuff?
I presume that it must be an essential part of the deal that the problem must be something very trivial for there to be great effects by swarming.
Re:Mythical man month (Score:4, Informative)
For example:
These things only occur to complex agents, like people. The idea behind swarm behavior is that the agents are simple, and need not individually perform complex tasks.
Boy, I don't like what that says about me as a Slashdot addict.
Re:Mythical man month (Score:5, Insightful)
Programming right now is an activity that requires huge amounts of context to produce good output. Just being distrubed can cost big. Splitting the context in half will cost, it will not benefit.
Programming is an extreme problem, though. Some things, like "getting from here to there" requires much less context. You routinely set out on journeys with incrediblely incomplete amounts of knowlege regarding the conditions of your path. Sometimes you end up taking alternate routes because of obstructions. Compared to the amount of context maintained while programming, you set off to your destinations almost blind.
Only some problems can be "swarmed", mostly where there's some form of reinforcement that can be used. "Getting from here to there" is a great, obvious example of that, with the phermone trails reinforcement. On the other hand, the whole point of programming and its great attaction to me is the desire to never do the same thing twice, almost the exact opposite kind of problem. ("The number one sin of programming is code duplication." - me.)
Re:Mythical man month (Score:2)
On a similair note, I recall a lecturer at my old University [brookes.ac.uk] saying something along the lines of: "The single worst invention for programming was copy and paste".
Re:Mythical man month (Score:2, Insightful)
This only works if each swarming entity is not important (or expensive) by itself.
An online Starcraft RPG? Only at [netnexus.com]
Ah, yes... but... (Score:4, Funny)
A business application (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like I know what Michael Crichton reads... (Score:2, Funny)
Having written the above, I still can't believe I read the whole book.
Ancient observation (Score:2, Offtopic)
Emergence [emergence.org] is cool, finding it in a 3000 year old book is priceless.
-Peace
hmm (Score:1)
when we are smart enough to know what we want, we are smart enough to not need leaders to show us what that is.
B.U.R.N. !!! (Score:2)
DS: That story brings two things to mind. First, why don't we use these ant pheromones to direct ants away from our kitchens instead of poisoning the environment (and our children) with toxic chemicals?
EB: Good question. My guess is that they'll come back.
The fact that this was, I think, an unintentional burn just makes it better.
class (Score:5, Interesting)
Dr. Evil (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, yes, those horrible days and nights writing poetry as child in the South of France. Sometimes Reginald wouldn't bring my water chilled, so I had to berate him. In the summer we made meat helmets! ~Peace out, Airrage.
i read this book! (Score:1)
In the end, the people turned out to be covered by the swarms!
Don't trust him!
Anyone see that episode of Sliders? (Score:2)
Dirk Gently Navigation (Score:5, Funny)
Follow someone who looks like he knows where he's going.. You may not end up where you want to be, but chances are you'll find your way somewhere interesting.
Me and my friend actually did that, arriving in Vancouver at 4:00AM. We followed a few random people to strange places (We stopped following the armed car when we figured that they might be getting a bit nervous). Befere long, we ended up in front of a Dennys. We stopped for breakfast/supper and then called Peter for directions to his place.
Tried it a few times since then -- as long as you've got a little time to spare, you can find some very interesting things about the place you're in.
Re:Dirk Gently Navigation (Score:5, Interesting)
It finds the 'good' stuff, i.e. the things that anybody would actually bid on. By cultivating collections of people who buy the kinds of things I am interested in, I seldom anymore actually browse 'raw' ebay for items to buy.
Interestingly, when you pull up a query for an eBay account held by someone in Germany, eBay returns a message that they aren't allowed to gather and give out that information for German citizens.
Re:Dirk Gently Navigation (Score:2)
At that time the signal/noise ratio for usenet was high enough that, whatever you read, it was likely to be worth reading.
Erm, is this thinking new? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't belive I'm quoting a shirt... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can't belive I'm quoting a shirt... (Score:2)
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (Score:5, Interesting)
the birth of the star trek borg (Score:2)
ad 2003
resistance is futile
Been there Done That (Score:4, Insightful)
This happens all the time in the business world. Any attempt at a new thought, in particular meetings, will be met with vile and a scorn, right before they they beat you to death with the conference room phone. It is a sort of a mindless action that is drilled into people in corporations in much the same manner as wasps or bees. Attack anything that threatens the stability of the nest!
So I guess this just proves, "The Future is already here!"
ATTACK!!! (Score:2)
what? microsoft's marketing dept?
sorry, it had to be done. in all seriousnes, no matter how valid a point he may have, i'm not sure i want to trust someone who develops telecom theory out of a childhood nightmare...maybe i'm just odd...
-frozen
Re:ATTACK!!! (Score:2)
Swarm Intelligence: The book (Score:5, Informative)
People interested in intelligence and life as an emergent and evolving quality would probably also enjoy "Creation: Life and how to make it", "The Tipping Point", and "Figment of Reality". They should all be reasonably easy to find.
I think there is plenty of room for new inventions from those who understand both software technology and the emergence of intelligence from social models.
Read up! Enjoy!
Cheers, Jouni
Interesting subject but... (Score:2, Funny)
Is it just me, or did the whole subject get incredibly borint in that last sentence? There was things like "swarm intelligence" and "carnivorous wasps", which sound all cool, but then you start talking about businessa.. zZz..
Include something like "using this for world domination" or "free pr0n", and I would absolutely read the article!
Are we a swarm of cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would define a cell as the basic life form, and anything greater than a cell is not a single 'creature'. Humans, like the ant colony, are a giant collaborative effort.
Of course, there's something in our brain that gives us the sense of I, the individual, irreducible person. It's an illusion. But it helps us survive, I guess (By us I mean "we cells," not you).
genetic algorithms (Score:3, Interesting)
Put out a bunch of genes, see which ones survive. The ones that don't die, the ones that do are re-integrated.
Put out a bunch of ants, see which bring back food. The ones that do, copy, the ones that don't forget about.
Or how about neural networks. Put out a bunch of connections. The ones that work, strengthen, the ones that don't weaken.
Is it just me or is it all the same general idea.
So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:2)
The process of creating Open Source (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't this the way open source software is (ideally) built? Thousands of people, each with their own special abilities, each optimizing the solution little by little ? "Pheromones" marking the stable, useful modifications to the original "path" ?
the Borg? (Score:2)
Am I the only one... (Score:2, Interesting)
Even GNU geeks without the socialogical prowess of ESR must have investigated the etymology of the word Bonobo at some point. That an individual (whose name is a homynym of the name of the family of simians thought to be most closely related to humans because of their social habits and also happens to be the name of one of the most recognized GNU projects) is discussing animal-kingdom sociological theory applied to business process and application cycles is uhh... fishy in a very non-darwinian kind of way.
Wait -- his first name is Eric... maybe he is ESR!!!
Nah, I decided to really RTFA. Just coincidence. But it does make you wonder about monkeys and typewriters, although it appears they're more likely to produce "Origin of Species" than "King Lear"
Problems with swarm implementations (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting (Score:2)
An emergent behaviour of seemingly simple interactions within the brain.
Prey - M. Crichton (Score:2)
M@
Bah! If swarms are so intelligent.... (Score:2)
Amazing! (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:1)
Re:I've heard about swarm intelligence.... (Score:2, Funny)
(With apologies to Sidney Harris)