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====== Comparison of naturally evolved and engineered solutions ======

// Published 24 December, 2019 //

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<p><em>This page describes a project that is in progress, and does not yet have results</em></p>
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<p>We are comparing naturally evolved and engineered solutions to problems, to learn about regularities that might let us make inferences about artificial intelligence from what we know about naturally evolved intelligence.</p>
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===== Details =====


==== Motivation ====


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<p>Engineers and evolution have faced many similar design problems. For instance, the problem of designing an efficient flying machine. Another instance of a design problem that engineers and evolution have both worked on is designing intelligent machines. We hope that by looking at other instances of engineers and evolution working on similar problems, we will be able to learn more about how future AI systems will compare to evolved intelligences.</p>
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==== Methods ====


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<p>We will collect examples of optimization problems that engineers and evolution would perform better on if they could. Here are some candidate examples of such problems: </p>
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<ul>
<li><div class="li">Flying</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Hovering</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Swimming</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Running</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Traveling long distances</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Traveling quickly</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Jumping</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Balancing</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Height of structure</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Piercing</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Applying compressive force</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Striking</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Tensile strength</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Pumping blood</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Breathing</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Liver function</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Detecting light</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Recording light</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Producing light</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Detecting sound</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Recording sound</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Producing sound</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Heat insulation</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Determining chemical composition of a substance</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Detecting chemical composition in the air</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Adhesiveness</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Picking heavy things up</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Joint activation</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Elasticity</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Toxicity</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Extracting energy from sunlight</div></li>
<li><div class="li">Storing energy</div></li>
</ul>
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<p>We will then collect the best solutions we can readily find to these design problems, made by human engineers and by evolution respectively, and quantitative data on their performances. We will try to collect this over time, for engineered solutions.</p>
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=== Analysis ===


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<p>We will use the data to answer the following questions for different design problems:</p>
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<li><div class="li">How long does it take engineers to half, match, double, triple, etc. the performance of evolution’s current best designs? </div></li>
<li><div class="li">What does the shape of engineers’ performance curve look like around the point where engineers’ solutions first match evolution’s? </div></li>
<li><div class="li">How efficient (in terms of performance per energy or mass used) are the first solutions that match evolution’s performance compared to evolution’s best solutions? </div></li>
<li><div class="li">How long does it take engineers to find a more efficient solution after finding an equally good solution in terms of absolute performance? </div></li>
<li><div class="li">From a design perspective, how similar are engineers’ first equally good solutions to evolution’s best solutions? </div></li>
</ol>
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<p>We will use patterns in the answers to these questions across technologies to make inferences about the answers for natural and artificial intelligence.</p>
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<p>In general, the more similar the answers to these questions turn out to be across design problems, the more strongly we will expect the answers for problems addressed by future AI developments to fit the same patterns.</p>
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<p>We expect to make the data publicly available, so that others can check our conclusions, investigate related questions, or use it in other investigations of technology and evolution.<br/></p>
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