Related papers: Novelty Search makes Evolvability Inevitable
Biological evolution can be conceptualized as a search process in the space of gene sequences guided by the fitness landscape, a mapping that assigns a measure of reproductive value to each genotype. Here we discuss probabilistic models of…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. Reproduction depends on the payoff a strategy receives. The payoff depends on the environment that may change over time, on intrinsic uncertainties, and on other sources of…
Individuals of different types, may it be genetic, cultural, or else, with different levels of fitness often compete for reproduction and survival. A fitter type generally has higher chances of disseminating their copies to other…
The acquisition of competence is a key element in the ability to assert oneself in the complex and rapidly changing modern worlds of work. This paper examines the evolution of competence, i.e. the role of competences in an evolutionary…
The vast majority of recommender systems model preferences as static or slowly changing due to observable user experience. However, spontaneous changes in user preferences are ubiquitous in many domains like media consumption and key…
Machine learning-based design has gained traction in the sciences, most notably in the design of small molecules, materials, and proteins, with societal implications spanning drug development and manufacturing, plastic degradation, and…
Although most theories posit that natural behavior can be explained as maximizing some form of extrinsic reward, often called utility, some behaviors appear to be reward independent. For instance, spontaneous motor babbling in human…
Evolutionary techniques driven by behavioural diversity, such as novelty search, have shown significant potential in evolutionary robotics. These techniques rely on priorly specified behaviour characterisations to estimate the similarity…
One of the most intriguing questions in evolution is how organisms exhibit suitable phenotypic variation to rapidly adapt in novel selective environments which is crucial for evolvability. Recent work showed that when selective environments…
Robot navigation is a crucial task with applications to social robots in dynamic human environments. While Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown great promise for this problem, the policy quality is highly sensitive to the specification of…
Efficient exploration remains a challenging problem in reinforcement learning, especially for tasks where extrinsic rewards from environments are sparse or even totally disregarded. Significant advances based on intrinsic motivation show…
Is undecidability a requirement for open-ended evolution (OEE)? Using methods derived from algorithmic complexity theory, we propose robust computational definitions of open-ended evolution and the adaptability of computable dynamical…
Scientists and inventors set the direction of their work amidst an evolving landscape of questions, opportunities, and challenges. This paper introduces a measurement framework to quantify how far researchers move from their existing…
Learning in environments with sparse rewards remains a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning. Artificial curiosity addresses this limitation through intrinsic rewards to guide exploration, however, the precise formulation of these…
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
Recent analysis of empirical data [F. Radicchi, A. Baronchelli & L.A.N. Amaral. PloS ONE 7, e029910 (2012)] showed that humans adopt L\'evy flight strategies when exploring the bid space in on-line auctions. A game theoretical model proved…
Reinforcement learning algorithms rely on carefully engineering environment rewards that are extrinsic to the agent. However, annotating each environment with hand-designed, dense rewards is not scalable, motivating the need for developing…
We study the emergence of conformity preferences in an environment in which agents choose effort under heterogeneous, possibly misspecified returns, and social interactions do not directly affect material payoffs. Some agents choose effort…
Resources are often limited, therefore it is essential how convincingly competitors present their claims for them. Beside a player's natural capacity, here overconfidence and bluffing may also play a decisive role and influence how to share…
When group members claim a portion of limited resources, it is tempting to invest more effort to get a larger share. However, if everyone acts similarly, they all get the same piece they would obtain without extra effort. This is the…