The Result

Genetic programming evolved a circuit whose functionality is equivalent to that of the circuits patented by George Philbrick (1956) as described in Section 4.3 of Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence (Koza, Keane, Streeter, Mydlowec, Yu, and Lanza 2003).

BBB2113

Basis for Claim of Human-Competitiveness

The genetically evolved circuit satisfies the requirements stated in Philbrick’s patent (1956).

Referring to the eight criteria in table 1.2 of Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence (Koza, Keane, Streeter, Mydlowec, Yu, and Lanza 2003) for establishing that an automatically created result is competitive with a human-produced result, the rediscovery by genetic programming of the Philbrick circuit satisfies the following two of the eight criteria:

(A) The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention.

(F) The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered.

The rediscovery by genetic programming of the Philbrick circuit came over 40 years after Philbrick received a patent for his invention. Nonetheless, the fact that the original human-designed version satisfied the Patent Office’s criteria for patent-worthiness means that the genetically evolved duplicate would also have satisfied the Patent Office’s criteria for patent-worthiness (if only it had arrived earlier than Philbrick’s patent application).

References

Koza, John R., Keane, Martin A., Streeter, Matthew J., Mydlowec, William, Yu, Jessen, and Lanza, Guido. 2003. Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Philbrick, George A. 1956. Delayed Recovery Electric Filter Network. Filed May 18, 1951. U.S. patent 2,730,679. Issued January 10, 1956.

· The home page of Genetic Programming Inc. at www.genetic-programming.com.

· For information about the field of genetic programming and the field of genetic and evolutionary computation, visit www.genetic-programming.org

· The home page of John R. Koza at Genetic Programming Inc. (including online versions of most published papers) and the home page of John R. Koza at Stanford University

· For information about John Koza’s course on genetic algorithms and genetic programming at Stanford University

· Information about the 1992 book Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection, the 1994 book Genetic Programming II: Automatic Discovery of Reusable Programs, the 1999 book Genetic Programming III: Darwinian Invention and Problem Solving, and the 2003 book Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence. Click here to read chapter 1 of Genetic Programming IV book in PDF format.

· 3,440 published papers on genetic programming (as of November 28, 2003) in a searchable bibliography (with many on-line versions of papers) by over 880 authors maintained by William Langdon’s and Steven M. Gustafson.

· For information on the Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines journal published by Kluwer Academic Publishers

· For information on the Genetic Programming book series from Kluwer Academic Publishers, see the Call For Book Proposals

· For information about the annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO) conference (which includes the annual GP conference) to be held on June 26–30, 2004 (Saturday – Wednesday) in Seattle and its sponsoring organization, the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC). For information about the annual Euro-Genetic-Programming Conference to be held on April 5-7, 2004 (Monday – Wednesday) at the University of Coimbra in Coimbra Portugal. For information about the 2003 and 2004 Genetic Programming Theory and Practice (GPTP) workshops held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. For information about Asia-Pacific Workshop on Genetic Programming (ASPGP03) held in Canberra, Australia on December 8, 2003. For information about the annual NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware Conference (EH) to be held on June 24-26 (Thursday-Saturday), 2004 in Seattle.

Last updated on December 27, 2003