The discovery is the first step towards a search for the potential of artificial life.
A team of researchers in the United States has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that allows robots to be designed from scratch in seconds. Led by Illinois-based Northwestern University, the team of researchers gave the program a simple task: design a robot that can walk on a flat surface. The team claimed that the AI program took just 26 seconds to design a walking robot. This new AI program is not only fast, but can also run on personal computers that don’t have mind-boggling hardware, the researchers said.
This is a leap in the development of AI because it presents innovative ideas, unlike existing tools that only mimic the work of past humans without the ability to generate new ideas.
The research into the discovery has been published in the National Academy of Sciences.
“We have discovered a very fast AI-driven design algorithm that bypasses the traffic jams of evolution without falling back on the biases of human designers,” Sam Kriegman of Northwestern University, who led the work, said on the university’s website .
“We told the AI that we wanted a robot that could walk on land. Then we just pressed a button and presto! It instantly generated a blueprint for a robot that looks nothing like any animal that has ever walked the Earth. call this process ‘instantaneous evolution’,” he added.
The new AI program evaluated the design, found flaws and chopped the simulated block to change its structure with each updated version. The virtual robot eventually developed the ability to bounce, jump and shake.
The discovery is the first step towards research into the potential of artificial life.
The robot itself is modest: small, soft and misshapen. And for now, it’s made of inorganic materials. But Mr. Kriegman said it represents the first step in a new era of AI-designed tools that, like animals, can interact directly with the world.
“When people look at this robot, they might see a useless gadget,” he said. “I see the birth of a brand new organism.”
