Via the @ataripodcast: in a 25-minute video, Jean Michel Sellier, Research Assistant Professor at Purdue University, demonstrates the use of an #Atari800XL to train a neural network using a genetic algorithm instead of the memory-hungry technique of gradient descent.

https://hackaday.com/2025/02/21/genetic-algorithm-runs-on-atari-800-xl/

I've had a soft spot for Artificial Life for a long time. During the last AI Winter in the mid 1990s, I was spurred to get back into education and onto a career in commercial software development by Stephen Levy's book "Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation". I loved that Artificial Life researchers borrowed well-understood mechanisms from genetics and implemented them in software to converge iteratively on solutions, in contrast to AI research, which was attempting to build models of categories which were not understood at all (and largely still aren't) - intelligence (whatever that is) and perception.

In subsequent years I wondered why I wasn't hearing any hype about Artificial Life; it turns out practitioners have been quietly getting on with solving problems using the technique. Meanwhile, yet again, AI boosters have blustered their way into the consciousness with another round of overcooked hype.

The Stephen Levy book is still worth a read, if you can find it. (IIRC Danny Hillis and the Connection Machine folks get a mention too.)

(I don't know if any of the genetic algorithm folks turned out to be supporters of eugenics, as many of the current crop of AI boosters seem to be.)

https://archive.org/details/artificiallifequ0000levy_l1x2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_setbacks_of_the_late_1980s_and_early_1990s

The current chatbot religion is the distilled wish magic of every college student (especially STEM majors) who failed humanities courses (especially philosophy).

Wow. Mike Levin has finally come out as a full #transhumanist: https://noemamag.com/ai-could-be-a-bridge-toward-diverse-intelligence #TESCREAL

I'm not sure "most of us think this way about the world we want for our kids"... at least I don't. Not at all. I find this toxic optimist "vision" utterly naive & disgusting. /1

Isn't it ironic that longtermism, with its delusional machine worldview and its unlimited hubris, will very likely accelerate the breakdown of human civilization and increase the probability of total human extinction? #TESCREAL

@timnitGebru

Techno-trandscendentalism #TESCREAL is spreading like wildfire in influential tech-affine circuits, and also in the so-called #MeaningMaking and #GameB communities.

It is an ideology that is dangerous and deluded.

http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/machine-metaphysics-and-the-cult-of-techno-transcendentalism

#AI is #AlgorithmicMimicry