Analyzing a Decade of Human-Competitive (“HUMIE”) Winners: What Can We Learn?

Many of us witnes the wonders of evolutionary computation (EC) on a daily basis as we put Darwin's dangerous idea (a la Daniel Dennett) to good (safe) use. At the turn of the millennium John Koza noticed how EC had matured to the point of producing results that competed with humans. In 2004 John founded the "HUMIES" competition: Human-Competitive Results Produced by Genetic and Evolutionary Computation.

This annual competition has generated a lot of hubbub and -- more importantly -- tons of great results of both scientific and industrial value. Lee Spector, at Hampshire College, and I have been interested in the human-competitive angle of EC for several years. Between the two of us, we're proud to be hugging eight HUMIE awards. Sadly, Lee has in the meantime been swayed by the Dark Side, joining the panel of judges for this illustrious award ... May the force be with you, Lee :-)

Lee's bright students, Karthik Kannappan, Tom Helmuth, Bill Lacava, Jake Wisdom, and Omri Bernstein joined the merry HUMIE bandwagon and we brainstormed on the merits of human-competitive machine evolution.

This past May we presented an analysis of a decade's worth of HUMIE winners at the GPTP workshop in Ann Arbor, MI (thanks Rick Riolo, Bill Worzel, and Mark Kotanchek for organizing a wonderful event!).

An advanced draft of our paper is now available for download: Analyzing a Decade of Human-Competitive (“HUMIE”) Winners: What Can We Learn?

Enjoy!

moshe sipper, writer & professor