MIT Technology Review has reported that a blob of “intelligent” (but thankfully still virtual) goo can compute solutions to one of the most famous problems in mathematics… what the heck could possibly go wrong with that?
Jeff Jones and Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England in the U.K. found that by representing the cities (involved in the famous traveling salesman problem) as a series of dots in a virtual petri dish and submerging the dots in a blob of virtual goo — consisting of many particles that each move according to a set of simple rules, like autonomous agents — results in a kind of intelligent blob that shows emergent behavior and rudimentary intelligence.
I don’t know what these guys are doing, but as long as it stays on the laptop I’ll be okay with it… for now.
