Robot swarms 'evolve' effective communication

Evolving Robots

Robots that artificially evolve ways to communicate with one another have been demonstrated by Swiss researchers. The experiments suggest that simulated evolution could be a useful tool for those designing of swarms of robots.
Roboticists Dario Floreano, Sara Mitri, and Stéphane Magnenat at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne collaborated with biologist Laurent Keller from the University of Lausanne.
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In contrast, in simulations with bots not closely related and when group performance was less important, some robots evolved misleading behaviour. Some even produced signals that lured other bots away far from food.

I thought this was a pretty interesting article. I've always believed that nature was the best model for what works and what doesn't. Studying and using nature's way just seems like the way to get good results. Of course I do see the potential dangers of what might come out of it in the distant future if we are not careful.

Yup, if simple robots like these are already able to develop deceiving behaviour thats directed at "other robots that are of another race/make/model" imagine what a full scale human level intelligent AI could do to its makers.

Originally posted by thematrix
Yup, if simple robots like these are already able to develop deceiving behaviour thats directed at "other robots that are of another race/make/model" imagine what a full scale human level intelligent AI could do to its makers.

Those are exactly my thoughts and fears.

It's simulated evolution. All the "evolving" is just pre-programmed. No worries.