Darwinian evolution is a significant architect of complexity in the natural world. The mechanisms by which evolution operates, including mutation, recombination, and selection, can be embodied in software and used to produce complex systems with a range of practical applications. Systems that use evolutionary mechanisms to produce software are called “genetic programming” systems. In this talk I will demonstrate the basic principles of genetic programming and survey some of the results that it has achieved. I will then discuss the potential that genetic programming has for automating the kind of programming work that is normally performed by humans.

Authors

Lee Spector Lee Spector is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Cognitive Science at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and an adjunct professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from Oberlin College in 1984 and a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland in 1992. His areas of teaching and research include genetic and evolutionary computation, quantum computation, and intersections between computer science, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the arts. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines (published by Springer) and a member of the editorial board of Evolutionary Computation (published by MIT Press). He is a member of the ACM-SIGEVO executive committee and he was named a Fellow of the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation.http://hampshire.edu/lspector/

Evolutionary computation methods e-session

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