Emergence : ants , big cities , and brains are the pattern ai agents use to learn today

Ants and terminates make up 30 percent of the Amazonian rain forest biomass. There are nearly 10,000 species of ant. Ants lack any advanced forebrains. “While there’s no single key to the success of the social insects, the collective intelligence of the colony system certainly played an essential role.” “Call it swarm logic”. A harvest ant will not only ascertain the shortest route to a food source, it will also prioritize food sources, based on their distance and ease of access. In response to changing external conditions, worker ants switch from nest-building to foraging to raising ant pupae. None of the individual ants are in charge. Deborah Gordon became interested and said, “I was interested in system where individuals who are unable to assess the global situation still work together in a coordinated way, and they manage to do it using only local information.” Harvest ants constant adjust the number of ants actively foraging for food, based on a number of variables: the overall colony size, the amount of food stored in the nest, the amount of food available in the surrounding area, even the vicinity of other colonies in the near vicinity. Ants secrete a finites number of chemicals and these chemical signals are used to communicate with other ants. “A foraging ant might expect to meet three other forages per minute-if she encounters more than three, she might follow a rule that has her return to the nest. Because larger, older colonies produce more foragers, ants may behave differently in larger colonies because they are more like to encounter other ants. Base on pheromone signals and frequency, the ant can adjust its behavior.