Robots Teach Humans Evolution

Robots Build Societies, Develop Language

In December 2007, researchers in Switzerland announced that they had created the first robots capable of a form of evolution - and had found something surprising along the way.

What they'd done was build a number of machines programmed with basic survival protocols, and put them in a dark room. Their mission was to find food, or perish.

Inside the room, there were a number of 'food sources', electrical power boosts. Some of these 'meals' were better than others, and a few were even 'poison', carrying a negative energy value.

After a period of time, the robots all reported in, and those with the highest percentage of success were declared the survivors. The robots were all then reprogrammed with strains of code mixed from the winning units, to create the effect of reproduction, and a little bit of random code was thrown in, to mimic natural mutation.

Naturally, as the process went on, the robots became better and better at finding the 'good' food sources, and avoiding the poison.

But what is most startling, after a time, several generations in to the experiment, the researchers noticed that some of the robots were signaling to other robots when they found food. They used built-in lights to communicate their finds to the rest of the community.

This trait for communication strengthened with each new generation, until the researchers were sure of their findings: the robots had learned to use a primitive language.

The significance cannot be understated. These robots were all initially programmed to fend for themselves. A survival of the fittest model was the goal, but the robots circumvented this element of their objective, and began to form the building blocks of a cohesive society.

Shocking as this may seem, there is more. Some of them even learned how to lie. A few of the robots, in an effort to promote their own odds of survival, would seek out the poison. Once located, they would then 'blink' the signal for "safe food here", and move away.