Collectives and the Design of Complex Systems

by Kagan Tumer (Editor), David Wolpert (Editor)

1. A Survey of Collectives.- 2. Theory of Collective Intelligence.- 3. On Learnable Mechanism Design.- 4. Asynchronous Learning in Decentralized A Game-Theoretic Approach.- 5. Competition between Adaptive Learning and Collective Efficiency.- 6. Managing Catastrophic Changes in a Collective.- 7. Effects of Interagent Communications on the Collective.- 8. Man and Human Limitations, Innovation, and Emergence in Resource Competition.- 9. Design Principles for the Distributed Control of Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robots.- 10. Two Paradigms for the Design of Artificial Collectives.- 11. Efficiency and Equity in Collective Systems of Interacting Heterogeneous Agents.- 12. Selection in Coevolutionary Algorithms and the Inverse Problem.- 13. Dynamics of Large Autonomous Computational Systems.- About the Editors.

340 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2003

About the author

Kagan Tumer is a science fiction author and professor of AI and Robotics. He attended seven schools in five cities in four countries, all before reaching high school. The constant upheaval taught him two things: observe the world and the people in it because you need to understand them, and don't get too attached to any place or anyone because neither will be there next year.

Turns out, that’s pretty good training for a writer.

Along the way, Kagan worked as a cafeteria food server, registrar's office clerk, print shop copier, soccer referee, math tutor, and well logging engineer. He also worked for NASA, designing autonomous robot coordination algorithms for future missions. When it finally dawned on him that NASA wasn't going to build and send hundreds of robots to Mars so he can play with them, he decided to create his own reality in Science Fiction.

After a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in the Pacific Northwest. His debut novel, Purged Souls, was a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist. When not writing, he ponders AI ethics, teaches AI, and mentors future scientists.