Developing AI machine the size of an ant.

[identityless]

Ants are very complex creatures. They have built complex colonines with extensive hieracy. They are known to sacrifice as a group to protect their queen. Yet, they they only about the size of a a few grain of salt.

The search for a machine that can mimic "real" intelligent behavior is ongoing. The latest and smallest intelligent device is about the intelligent and the size of a cockroach with all those complex circuitry and software embedded.

How does the intelligent of an ant function, yet the physical size is very tiny. Can computer scientist built an artificial ant (looks like one, function like one, but of a machine)?

And what about nanotechnology, is it stand-alone and based on intelligent behavior the size of a grain? Is there a machine built in it?

 

[Pete]

Peripheral post:

The behaviour of ant colonies is a fascinating example of emergence.

Individual ants have quite simple rules for behaviour, most along the lines of "if you smell this, then do this (relatively simple behaviour pattern)."

But when large numbers of these simple entities are together, quite complex behaviour emerges through their interactions.

It's an interesting thing that young ant colonies behave quite differently to old ant colonies, even though they might have the same number of ants, and with no difference between individual ants of the same type in the two colonies. The colony is more than the sum of its parts.

Animal brains are another example - each neuron operates according to simple rules, but the interactions between them produce extraordinarily complex behaviour.

John Conway's Game of Life is a truly marvelous tool to demonstrate this idea of emergence.

 

[space_man_8_]

I agree with Pete, individually the ants are quite simple, its only as a group that they seem complex. Most of their communication consists of pheramon signals telling ants that there is food somewhere, and how to get there. Thats why when theres a trail of ants and you run your finger through the trail (pheramon path) they can no longer find the trail, because you messed up their path. Theyre really not so smart at all