From: dan (dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com)
Date: Thu Aug 12 1999 - 13:39:35 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Spike, you're not in my kill file.
>
> Yes, distributed computing advances the Singularity. I think the people
> at singularity.org have a bunch of old Pentiums networked together. I'm
> not sure an ExI network would help, unless there was new software coming
> out as a result. I don't know of anyone here who's working on
> AI/neural-net stuff that runs distributed, someone who could benefit directly.
> --
Actually, there are some interesting algorithms that can use a very
loosely coupled system. Many parallel algorithms need high bandwidth and
low latency, but others don't. The current Key finders and SETI search
are at the extreme end of a spectrum, and can make effective use of a
large number of intermittently-connected processors with extremely low
bandwidth. At the other end are algorithms that are bandwidth-constrained
even when the processors are using processor busses or shared memory for
interprocessor communication.
The trick is to find a useful algorithm that uses the environment that is
now emerging. Many of us will soon have full-time connections (cable or ADSL)
with bandwidth in the 100Kbps range or better. Just as the advent of lots
of intermittently-connected Pentium-class computers gave rise to the Key
searchers, etc. cable modems and ADSL will enable a new class of distributed
algorithms.
It looks to me like genetic algorithms may be very effective in such an
environment. It appears that you can send a small "population" of solutions
off to a computer and have that computer "breed" an improved population, and then
"cross-breed" the resulting population back into the larger "gene pool."
With a simple fitness function, the intergeneration time is low and the bandwidth
high, but a more complex fitness function can be employed to gain better
results if you have enough computers. This lowers the bandwidth per computer,
and I think we can find some neat singularity-advancing genetic algorithms.
I don't know if this can be used an the first step of the "singularity bootstrap"
we discussed three years ago ( http://www.shirenet.com/~dgc/singularity ) But
maybe it could be. If we can create a fitness function for optimizing
fitness functions, and a fitness function for evaluating how well a program
works, we will be on our way to optimizing the web.
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