Bullock, Seth, John Cartlidge, and Martin Thompson. “Prospects for computational steering of evolutionary computation.” In Beyond Fitness: Visualizing Evolution—Workshop Proceedings of Eighth International Conference on Artificial Life , pp. 131-137. UNSW, 2002.
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Currently, evolutionary computation (EC) typically takes place in batch mode: algorithms are run autonomously, with the user providing little or no intervention or guidance. Although it is rarely possible to specify in advance, on the basis of EC theory, the optimal evolutionary algorithm for a particular problem, it seems likely that experienced EC practitioners possess considerable tacit knowledge of how evolutionary algorithms work. In situations such as this, computational steering (ongoing, informed user intervention in the execution of an otherwise autonomous computational process) has been profitably exploited to improve performance and generate insights into computational processes. In this short paper, prospects for the computational steering of evolutionary computation are assessed, and a prototype example of computational steering applied to a co-evolutionary algorithm is presented.