UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM presents "Information Parasites in Code Evolution" Andrés Burgos (Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire) 30 September 2015 (Wednesday) 1 pm -2 pm Hatfield, College Lane Campus Seminar Room D118 Everyone is Welcome to Attend Refreshments will be available Abstract: I present an information-theoretic model for the evolution of codes in a structured population of agents. In this model, agents maximise their long-term growth rate by following a Kelly-gambling strategy to bet on environmental conditions, where an increase in their environmental information is translated into an increase in their growth rate. Therefore, agents will try to maximise their information about their environment by "listening" to information from other agents in the population. However, for the information to be interpretable, a joint communication protocol needs to be established. We capture this requirement by dropping from the traditional Shannon communication model the assumption of an agent knowing the identity of the agent it is listening to. Joint codes, however, introduce a vulnerability: a parasitic entity can take advantage of the universality of the code. We study two types of parasites: one which minimises the mutual understanding among the agents of the population; and another, which tries to maximise its influence in the decisions of the agents of the population. We show general properties that emerge from the co-evolutionary arms race between the population and the parasite, such as population robustness and code diversification, and we show that parasites can be, in the long term, beneficial in the evolution of a host. --------------------------------------------------- Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium http://cs-colloq.stca.herts.ac.uk