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Agent Based Web-Communication Bees Invade the Internet
Agent Based Web-Communication In a fascinating article on BBC News, you can find out how the future of the web lies in Artificial Life. The feature, Bees Invade the Internet, discusses how an agent based approach to the internet may be the only way to cope with billions of online users and appliances. Simple software agents, based on very simple rules are defined. Their design is influenced by insects such as ants or bees, where a multitude of very simple entities can form a coherent whole with emergent intelligence. Emergent implies that the process is very difficult to understand at a low-level, but magically appears at a high-level. In this case, the observable behaviour is that all the users get served with the data they requested. Artificial Life is all about this, defining simple rules that start a life-cycle. This has been done with simple assembler programs before, but animal simulations are yet still simplistic. The challenge for AL, just like for this particular web application, is to find the set of magical rules that defines a single agent. This is often a difficult process, and either an expert system approach, or a learnt behaviour can be envisaged. | Alex J. Champandard 935 posts. Thursday 27 December, 19:31 Reply
response to the article The most interesting thing about the article was the comment on how the Lord of the Rings battle scenes were being created. I believe this is one of the major benefits of serious AI, less time and effort required to implement complex systems. If you find anything more on how they did the battle scenes, please post it. On the topic of Ants, or bees, running the internet, I believe this could get interesting. My concern, though, is that this may improve the chances of some sites on the net being disconnected from the rest. A self organizing structure may actually promote the development of such a disconnected topology by reinforcing the connections to the "popular" sites, and avoiding the "unpopular" sites. I think we may lose, at least partially, one of the great benefits of the web. Just my 2 cents. | wyldeling 16 posts. Thursday 03 January, 10:05 Reply
Emergent Web I'll see if I can find any more information on Lord of the Rings... I was indeed really impressed too ;) The problems you raise about the Net are very pertinent indeed, and I guess that's what the research is all about: making sure that everyone gets what they want, and not only the most important. However, the key issue is that the standard 'back-bone' approach will fail in the future when many users are online, so even a not-quite-perfect self-organising approach will perform better... | Alex J. Champandard 935 posts. Thursday 03 January, 11:24 Reply
Swarming Web This is a related article since it also uses a 'swarm' to provide hosting. New Scientist - Data Swarms Could Rescue Overloaded Web Sites The technology works, and is due this year. But it's no where near as ambitious as the project mentioned above. | Alex J. Champandard 935 posts. Wednesday 09 January, 12:53 Reply