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#genetics

13 posts13 participants0 posts today
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Amin Girasol

Via the @ataripodcast: in a 25-minute video, Jean Michel Sellier, Research Assistant Professor at Purdue University, demonstrates the use of an #Atari800XL to train a neural network using a genetic algorithm instead of the memory-hungry technique of gradient descent.

hackaday.com/2025/02/21/geneti

I've had a soft spot for Artificial Life for a long time. During the last AI Winter in the mid 1990s, I was spurred to get back into education and onto a career in commercial software development by Stephen Levy's book "Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation". I loved that Artificial Life researchers borrowed well-understood mechanisms from genetics and implemented them in software to converge iteratively on solutions, in contrast to AI research, which was attempting to build models of categories which were not understood at all (and largely still aren't) - intelligence (whatever that is) and perception.

In subsequent years I wondered why I wasn't hearing any hype about Artificial Life; it turns out practitioners have been quietly getting on with solving problems using the technique. Meanwhile, yet again, AI boosters have blustered their way into the consciousness with another round of overcooked hype.

The Stephen Levy book is still worth a read, if you can find it. (IIRC Danny Hillis and the Connection Machine folks get a mention too.)

(I don't know if any of the genetic algorithm folks turned out to be supporters of eugenics, as many of the current crop of AI boosters seem to be.)

archive.org/details/artificial

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_win

Hackaday · Genetic Algorithm Runs On Atari 800 XLFor the last few years or so, the story in the artificial intelligence that was accepted without question was that all of the big names in the field needed more compute, more resources, more energy…
#solarpunk#permacomputing#geneticalgorithms
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Science Updates

Those chunky doggos provide new insights into dog & human obesity.

“Studying the dogs showed us something really powerful: owners of slim dogs are not morally superior. The same is true of slim people. If you have a high genetic risk of obesity, then when there’s lots of food available you’re prone to overeating and gaining weight unless you put a huge effort into not doing so,” said Dr Eleanor Raffan of Cambridge U.

#dogs #genetics #obesity #research #science #data

labroots.com/trending/genetics

LabrootsObesity in Labradors Tells Us More About Human Obesity | Genetics And GenomicsSome dogs, like Labrador retrievers, are prone to obesity. Scientists have investigated the genetics of British Labrador retrievers and found .. | Genetics And Genomics
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Alan Boyle

#Mickey17, the new sci-fi movie from Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho, starts with the silly premise that you can 3D print copies of "expendable" space travelers. But it's a teachable moment for researchers looking into ways to modify the human body for living more comfortably on other worlds. We delve into that topic on the #FictionScience podcast. cosmiclog.com/2025/03/08/how-h #Space #Entertainment #Movies #Science #Genetics #3dprinting

Robert Pattinson in a double role on an icy planet in "Mickey 17"
Cosmic Log · How humans can reinvent themselves for life in spaceLet’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravit…
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