Invention and creativity in automated design by means of genetic programming

  • Authors:

  • John R. Koza;Martin A. Keane;Matthew J. Streeter;Thomas P. Adams;Lee W. Jones

  • Affiliations:

  • Stanford University, School of Medicine, Biomedial Informatics Program, 251 Campus Drive, Stanford, California 94305-5479, USA;Econometrics Inc., 1300 North Lake Shore #22B, Chicago, Illinois 60610, USA;Genetic Programming Inc., 990 Villa Street, Mountain View, California 94041, USA;Genetic Programming Inc., 990 Villa Street, Mountain View, California 94041, USA;Genetic Programming Inc., 990 Villa Street, Mountain View, California 94041, USA

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Some designs are sufficiently creative that they are considered to be inventions. The invention process is typically characterized by a singular moment when the prevailing thinking concerning a long-standing problem is, in a “flash of genius,” overthrown and replaced by a new approach that could not have been logically deduced from what was previously known. This paper discusses such logical discontinuities using an example based on the history of one of the most important inventions of the 20th century in electrical engineering, namely, the invention of negative feedback by AT&T's Harold S. Black. This 1927 invention overthrew the then prevailing idiom of positive feedback championed by Westinghouse's Edwin Howard Armstrong. The paper then shows how this historically important discovery can be readily replicated by an automated design and invention technique patterned after the evolutionary process in nature, namely, genetic programming. Genetic programming employs Darwinian natural selection along with analogs of recombination (crossover), mutation, gene duplication, gene deletion, and mechanisms of developmental biology to breed an ever improving population of structures. Genetic programming rediscovers negative feedback by conducting an evolutionary search for a structure that satisfies Black's stated high-level goal (i.e., reduction of distortion in amplifiers). Like evolution in nature, genetic programming conducts its search probabilistically without resort to logic using a process that is replete with logical discontinuities. The paper then shows that genetic programming can routinely produce many additional inventive and creative results. In this regard, the paper discusses the automated rediscovery of numerous 20th-century patented inventions involving analog electrical circuits and controllers, the Sallen–Key filter, and six 21st-century patented inventions.