Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Interesting conference workshop on Complexity, Evolution, and Emergent Intelligence

I was just reading the call for papers announcement for a workshop entitled "Workshop on Complexity, Evolution and Emergent Intelligence" at the AI*IA 09 Eleventh Conference of the Italian Association of Artificial Intelligence scheduled on December 12, 2009 in Reggio Emilia, Italy which covers a variety of topics related to complex systems and "aims at bringing together scientists who work from different perspectives, from basic science to applications, on the common theme of systems composed by many components that interact non-linearly."

The focus is on complex systems which "very often exhibit interesting features, as self-organisation, robustness, surprising collective processes and occasionally intelligence."

A workshop goal is to achieve closer interactions between the communities of Complex Systems Science (CSS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI):

Recent developments -- for example in the context of agent-based modelling, distributed and/or evolutionary computation -- represent new opportunities for further exploring and strengthening these scientific interactions and connections.

The workshop will pay close attention to the combination of intelligence and complex interactions:

As already suggested, the contemporary presence of intelligence and complex interactions may not be casual but, instead, able to disclose deeper links between the two characteristics. Are there universal patterns of organization in complex systems, from pre-biotic replicators to evolved beings, to artificial objects? Do these structures allow effective computational processes to develop?

Key questions are how robust structures which develop in such systems are, how information is incorporated into these structures and how computation emerges. The study of complex systems is also interested in determining the contributions of selection, chance and self-organization to the functioning and evolution of complex structures.

Topics of interest for the workshop include:

  • Agent based models
  • Cellular automata
  • Evolutionary computation
  • Information processing
  • Network properties
  • Self-organisation, emergent behaviours
  • Tangled hierarchies, description levels, reciprocal causality
  • Adaptation/exaptation
  • Evolution and co-evolution
  • Robustness, criticality
  • Pattern formation, pattern recognition, collective intelligence
  • Non linear dynamics, edge of chaos
  • The emergence of mind
  • Bio-inspired methods

I am most intrigued with tangled hierarchies and the emergence of mind, but it is all quite fascinating stuff.

-- Jack Krupansky