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01/29/2008: "Lying is part of nature's mathematics"

The team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Federal
Institute of Technology created the little experimental learning devices
to work in groups and hunt for "food" targets nearby while avoiding
"poison." Imagine their surprise when one generation of robots learned
to signal lies about the poison, sending opponents to their doom.

The little wheeled robots had neural circuitry with about 30 "genes"
that determine their behavior, and how much they react to light in the
environment. The food sources charged up the robots' batteries while the
poison drained them, and by using the genes of the most successful
feeders in 50 successive generations, the team was hoping to select the
fittest.

Three colonies of bots in the 50th generation learned to signal to other
robots in the group when then found food or poison. But the fourth
colony included lying cheats that signaled food when they found poison
and then calmly rolled over to the real food while other robots went to
their battery-death.

[ Morality is wishful thinking. ]

http://gizmodo.com/346029/scientists-invent-robots-that-lie-real-bender-closer-than-ever