Thinking about this (less the usual reaction to such AI hype - "How many dim journalists does it take to anthromorphize something little more than a fancy lightswitch....") --- it came to mind to question how complex a world mechanism and possibilities for behavior is needed before you can start using it as a remote analogy of human level behavior ??


Cooperative behavior where units of similar genetics are seen as 'Us' and thus worthy of help (signaling them that food is here or equiv) and trying to fool/block the acquisition of that resource by 'The Others' (ones not sharing the same genes).

I suppose IDENTIFY_GENETIC_MATCH could be turned into a gene/set of genes that modiy behavior, but that seems so contrived because the GA system didnt create the mechanism from much simpler primitives itself.

Too many genes and you get into combinatoric chaos-land (millions of generations of a world of billions of units to grow behaviors that are not chaotic ineffectiveness).

Too few genes and your potential for complex behaviors are virtually nil.



I though of the above and of the old 'amino acid soup' theory of evolution, I wonder if anyone doing these experiments has noticed (if the mechanism is even possible) groupings of units coalescing to connect their behaviors.

An Idea would be to add a gene that allows connection to one or more other units to form super units -- whereby the limited behaviors of a GA gene system can group into a next order of organism (effectively the original units become 'super=genes' allowing much more complex behavior).
(Unfortunately this will be subject to the combinatorics effect unless some stability factor causes the unit mutation to slow down and the generational cycle to now be mostly at the higher order.)

Billions and billions ....