Alife using adaptive, autonomous, and individual agent control

Abstract

This is a review of three, agent control algorithm, replication experiments. In the 1948 essay, Intelligent Machinery, the English mathematician Alan Turing described an algorithm for constructing a machine that he claimed was capable of cybernetic (or steered feedback) self-organization. There are few, if any, references in either the historical or the technical literatures to instantiations made of this algorithm. Turing named the machine the P-Type Unorganized Machine. Considering the lack of replication evidence in the literature, three hypotheses motivated this review: 1) Turing did not describe the algorithm with sufficient detail so as to make it possible to instantiate, or that 2) if the algorithm could be instantiated it would not operate as Turing stated, or 3) both. The three replication experiments reviewed here proved the hypotheses qualitatively false when unique P-Type machines were instantiated. Each instantiation functioned as an adaptive, autonomous, and individual agent controller.