@futurebird @budududuroiu
I remember seeing demos of genetic algorithms learning to walk in the ‘90s. Even without the robots, there was a little physics simulator where you could build frames of muscles (things that could contract) bones (rigid) and skin (surface for pushing against the environment).
It was neat because you could build things that looked like real animals and it would normally converge on how they actually moved. Pretty much anything vaguely fish-like swam like a fish, and it would learn this starting from a bunch of programs that randomly twitched muscles and then combining parts of the ones that travelled the furthest each generation. You could add other metrics (can it turn corners, can it navigate this path) later on. If you built something completely weird (five-legged create with different-length legs) you’d get fascinating ways of moving. And the most interesting thing about that was that it showed symmetry was an evolutionary path that was largely coincidental to movement: animals would work fine without it, it just happened to be an easy path.
And it was cool. And there were claims that it would lead to super-intelligence and the singularity, but mostly people ignored them because they were obvious nonsense. But when you show them generated text they suddenly all anthropomorphise.
