A family of Gödel machine implementations

Abstract

The Gödel Machine is a universal problem solver encoded as a completely self-referential program capable of rewriting any part of itself, provided it can prove that the rewrite is useful according to some utility function, encoded within itself. Based on experience gained by constructing a virtual machine capable of running the first Gödel Machine implementation written in self-referential code, we discuss several important refinements of the original concept. We also show how different approaches to implementing the proof search leads to a family of possible Gödel Machine implementations. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.