FYI: AI-programmer

[Ian Kelly]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:41 AM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's not artificial intelligence, though. It's artificial program
> generation based on a known target output. The "Fitness" calculation
> is based on a specific target string. This is fine for devising a
> program that will produce the entire works of Shakespeare, since there
> is a target string for that (actually, several targets, plus you have
> to work out whether you want the works of Shakespeare or the works of
> some guy named Bacon... mmm bacon), but I suggest that a more
> sophisticated and useful goal be implemented.

Indeed, it seems to me that this is basically Richard Dawkins' weasel
program, with the addition of a transformation step in the fitness
function that amounts to running the string through a Brainfuck
interpreter.  There is a rather large gap between this and getting
computers to generate programs that do anything interesting.

I am curious about how he deals with infinite loops in the generated
programs.  Probably he just kills the threads after they pass some
time threshold?