Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-iron-bar-capable-decision-making.html
Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
August 24, 2015 by Lisa Zyga
Decision-making—the ability to choose one path out of several options—is generally considered a cognitive ability possessed by biological systems, but not by physical objects. Now in a new study, researchers have shown that any rigid physical (i.e., non-living) object, such as an iron bar, is capable of decision-making by gaining information from its surroundings accompanied by physical fluctuations.
<snip>
"The most important implication that we wish to claim is that the proposed scheme will provide a new perspective for understanding the information-processing principles of certain lower forms of life," Kim, from the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics' National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, told Phys.org. "These lower lifeforms exploit their underlying physics without needing any sophisticated neural systems."
As the researchers explain in their study, the only requirement for a physical object to exhibit an efficient decision-making ability is that the object must be "volume-conserving." Any rigid object, such as an iron bar, meets this requirement and therefore is subject to a volume conservation law. This means that, when exposed to fluctuations, the object may move slightly to the right or left, but its total volume is always conserved. Because this displacement resembles a tug-of-war game with a rigid object, the researchers call the method "tug-of-war (TOW) dynamics."
<snip>
By showing that decision-making is not limited to biological systems, the new method has potential applications in artificial intelligence.
<snip>
More information: Song-Ju Kim, et al. "Efficient decision-making by volume-conserving physical object." New Journal of Physics. DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/8/083023
Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
August 24, 2015 by Lisa Zyga
Decision-making—the ability to choose one path out of several options—is generally considered a cognitive ability possessed by biological systems, but not by physical objects. Now in a new study, researchers have shown that any rigid physical (i.e., non-living) object, such as an iron bar, is capable of decision-making by gaining information from its surroundings accompanied by physical fluctuations.
<snip>
"The most important implication that we wish to claim is that the proposed scheme will provide a new perspective for understanding the information-processing principles of certain lower forms of life," Kim, from the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics' National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, told Phys.org. "These lower lifeforms exploit their underlying physics without needing any sophisticated neural systems."
As the researchers explain in their study, the only requirement for a physical object to exhibit an efficient decision-making ability is that the object must be "volume-conserving." Any rigid object, such as an iron bar, meets this requirement and therefore is subject to a volume conservation law. This means that, when exposed to fluctuations, the object may move slightly to the right or left, but its total volume is always conserved. Because this displacement resembles a tug-of-war game with a rigid object, the researchers call the method "tug-of-war (TOW) dynamics."
<snip>
By showing that decision-making is not limited to biological systems, the new method has potential applications in artificial intelligence.
<snip>
More information: Song-Ju Kim, et al. "Efficient decision-making by volume-conserving physical object." New Journal of Physics. DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/8/083023
7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
