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A space where agents can thrive and evolve
It has been suggested that intelligence should be present on Internet sites
in the form of intelligent agents. According to this hypothesis, such environments
will contain software agents that interact with human users and adapt according
to the behavior displayed in those interactions [93].
With Tron we are exploring the hypothesis that one of the forms in which this
idea may be realized is through the presence of species of agents evolving through
their interactions with the rest of the web. From this perspective, the Internet
is seen as a complex environment with virtual niches inhabited by adaptive agents.
Here we propose that learning complex behaviors can be achieved in a coevolutionary
environment where one population consists of the human users of an interactive
software tool and the ``opposing'' population is artificial, generated by a
coevolutionary learning engine. A niche must be created in order for the arms
race phenomenon to take place, requiring that:
- 1.
- A sufficiently large number of potential human users must exist.
- 2.
- The artificial population must provide a useful environment for the human users,
even when -- in the early stages -- many instances perform poorly.
- 3.
- An evaluation of the performance of the artificial population must be measurable
from its interaction with the human users.
The experimental learning environment we created for the game Tron met these
requirements. First, the game is played in a Java applet window on our web site.
As Tron was being launched, Java was a new thing and there was a great interest
on any applications, particularly games. So by advertising our site in Java
games lists we were able to attract visitors. Second, our earlier experiments
with Tron had shown us that, by self-play, we could produce players that were
not entirely uninteresting when faced by humans. And third, each round of Tron
results in a performance measure: a win, a loss or (rarely) a tie.
Next: Experimental Model
Up: Intelligence on the Web
Previous: Intelligence on the Web
Pablo Funes
2001-05-08