Immediate opening (uupdated August July 8, 2007) for scientific research programmer at Genetic Programming Inc.

Welcome to

www.genetic-programming.com

(the home page of Genetic Programming Inc., a privately funded research group that does research in applying genetic programming)

Last updated July 8, 2007

Sources of Information about the Field of Genetic Programming (GP), Genetic Algorithms (GA), and the Field of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GEC)

Conferences about Genetic Programming (GP) and Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GEC)

Application Areas for Genetic Programming

News about Genetic Programming

Parallelization of Genetic Programming

John Koza’s Publications on Genetic Programming

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Other Links

What is Genetic Programming (GP)?

Genetic programming (GP) is an automated method for creating a working computer program from a high-level problem statement of a problem. Genetic programming starts from a high-level statement of “what needs to be done” and automatically creates a computer program to solve the problem.

There are now 36 instances where genetic programming has automatically produced a result that is competitive with human performance, including 15 instances where genetic programming has created an entity that either infringes or duplicates the functionality of a previously patented 20^th-century invention, 6 instances where genetic programming has done the same with respect to a 21^st-centry invention, and 2 instances where genetic programming has created a patentable new invention.

Given these results, we say that “Genetic programming now routinely delivers high-return human-competitive machine intelligence.” Click here for our definitions of “human-competitive,” the “AI ratio” (“artificial-to-intelligence” ratio) and “high-return,” “routine,” and “machine intelligence.” This statement is the most important point of the 2003 book Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence. Click here to read chapter 1 of Genetic Programming IV in PDF format. Click here for 2004 awards for human-competitive results (based on presentations at the GECCO-2004 conference in Seattle on June 27, 2004).

The fact that genetic programming can evolve entities that are competitive with human-produced results suggests that genetic programming can be used as an automated invention machine to create new and useful patentable inventions. In acting as an invention machine, evolutionary methods, such as genetic programming, have the advantage of not being encumbered by preconceptions that limit human problem-solving to well-troden paths. Genetic programming has delivered a progression of qualitatively more substantial results in synchrony with five approximately order-of-magnitude increases in the expenditure of computer time (over the 15-year period from 1987 to 2002).

Genetic programming has 16 important attributes that one would reasonably expect of a system for automatic programming (sometimes also called program synthesis or program induction). Genetic programming has seven important differences from conventional approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). For additional information, click here for PowerPoint (PPT) presentation on genetic programming (about 5 Megabytes) similar to that presented at the 2003 Accelerating Change Conference on September 13, 2003 and similar to the overview lecture given on September 24, 2003 in John Koza’s course at Stanford University on genetic algorithms (GA) and genetic programming (GP).

How Genetic Programming Works

Genetic programming starts with a primordial ooze of thousands of randomly created computer programs. This population of programs is progressively evolved over a series of generations. The evolutionary search uses the Darwinian principle of natural selection (survival of the fittest) and analogs of various naturally occurring operations, including crossover (sexual recombination), mutation, gene duplication, gene deletion. Genetic programming sometimes also employs developmental processes by which an embryo grows into fully developed organism. Old Chinese saying says “animated gif is worth one mega-word,” so click here for short tutorial of “What is GP?” including about two dozen animated gifs. This short tutorial contains a discussion of the preparatory steps of a run of genetic programming, the executional steps (that is, the flowchart of genetic programming), an illustrative simple run of genetic programming for a problem of symbolic regression of a quadratic polynomial, a discussion of developmental genetic programming for the automatic synthesis of both the topology and sizing of analog electrical circuits (potentially also including placement and routing), and the use of a turtle to draw complex structures (such as antenna). In addition, genetic programming can automatically create, in a single run, a general (parameterized) solution to a problem in the form of a graphical structure whose nodes or edges represent components and where the parameter values of the components are specified by mathematical expressions containing free variables. That is, genetic programming can automatically create a general solution to a problem in the form of a parameterized topology.

Sources of Information about the Field of Genetic Programming (GP), Genetic Algorithms (GA), and the Field of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GEC)

The technique of genetic programming (GP) is one of the techniques of the field of genetic and evolutionary computation (GEC) which, in turn, includes techniques such as genetic algorithms (GA), evolution strategies (ES), evolutionary programming (EP), grammatical evolution (GE), and machine code (linear genome) genetic programming.

16 authored books, 4 videos, and 4 edited books on genetic programming (GP), including 6 books in the Genetic Programming Book series from Kluwer Academic Publishers (as part of the bigger list of 73 authored books, 32 edited books, and 4 videos on genetic and evolutionary computation).
17 conference proceedings books on genetic programming (GP), including the 3 annual GP conferences, 5 annual GECCO conferences (that now include the annual GP conference), 6 annual Euro-GP conferences, the 2003 Genetic Programming Theory and Practice workshop (GPTA), the 1995 AAAI Symposium on Genetic Programming, and the 1995 Workshop on Genetic Programming (as part of a bigger list of 99 conference proceedings books on evolutionary computation).
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
Over 4,000 published papers on evolutionary computation in a searchable bibliography maintained by Karsten Weicker and Nicole Weicker containing entries on genetic and evolutionary computation and related areas (e.g. artificial life).
About two dozen conferences with Published Proceedings that are held regularly in the field of genetic programming and genetic and evolutionary computation (GEC)
2004 awards for human-competitive results (based on presentations at the GECCO-2004 conference in Seattle on June 27, 2004).
E-Mail Mailing List on Genetic Programming, the EC-Digest (formerly the GA-Digest), and other mailing lists.
Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines journal (published by Kluwer Academic Publishers and edited by Wolfgang Banzhaf) (started January 2000). This journal is available as part of membership in the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC)
Evolutionary Computation journal (published by The MIT Press and edited by Marc Schoenauer). This journal is available as part of membership in International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC)
IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation journal (published by IEEE Neural Network Society and edited by Xin Yao)
Software for genetic programming, genetic algorithms, and other evolutionary computation techniques, including the "Little LISP" Computer Code for Genetic Programming as Contained in 1992 book Genetic Programming (Koza 1992)
37 completed Ph.D. theses on genetic programming
58 students working on thesis involving genetic programming
A partial list of people compiled by Bill Langdon who are active in genetic programming
International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC). ISGEC is the only membership organization in the field of genetic and evolutionary computation. It operates of the annual GECCO conference (largest conference in the field of genetic and evolutionary computation) and the biannual FOGA conference.
Evo-Net —The Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computation (an extensive clearinghouse of information about the field of genetic and evolutionary computation and operator of the annual Euro-GP conferences and the Evo-Net workshops)
The GA Archives, including back issues of the GA-Digest and EC-Digest, genetic algorithm code in various programming languages, an extensive list of conference announcements in the field of genetic and evolutionary computation, etc.
Book series of genetic programming for Kluwer Academic Publishers book series on genetic programming, edited by John R. Koza
Book series on genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation from Kluwer Academic Publishers, edited by David E. Goldberg.
Courses (and short courses) at various universities on genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and evolutionary computation
For information about John Koza’s course on genetic algorithms and genetic programming at Stanford University
11 Books of Student Papers from John Koza's Courses at Stanford University on genetic algorithms and genetic programming and artificial life
6 Course Readers from John Koza's courses at Stanford University on genetic algorithms and genetic programming and artificial life
John Koza's home page at Stanford University
For 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 (2003) in PDF format.
36 human-competitive results produced by genetic programming, including 21 previously patented inventions replicated by genetic programming and 2 patentable new inventions generated by genetic programming.
Link to http://www.genetic-programming.COM (“genetic-programming.COM” WITH the hyphen) (Genetic Programming Inc.) including information about 1,000-Pentium parallel computer for doing genetic programming research.
Jobs for scientific research programmer at Genetic Programming Inc.
Link to Jaime Fernandez’s genetic programming notebook site (“geneticprogramming.com” WITHOUT the hyphen)
David Beasley’s Frequently Asked Questions about genetic and evolutionary computation. This comes in 6 parts. Part 2 has a summary of the different types of genetic and evolutionary computation.

Conferences about Genetic Programming (GP) and Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GEC)

Annual 2005 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO) conference to be held on June 25–29, 2005 (Saturday – Wednesday) in Washington DC. GECCO is the largest conference in the field of genetic and evolutionary computation. The GECCO-2005 conference is a combination of the 10^th annual Genetic Programming Conference (GP-2005) and the 14^th International Conference on Genetic Algorithms (ICGA-2005). GECCO is operated by the International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC).

Annual 2005 Euro-Genetic-Programming Conference (and the co-located Evolutionary Combinatorial Optimization conference and other Evo-Net workshops) to be held on March 30 – April 1, 2005 (Wednesday-Friday) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Annual NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware (EH) to be held on June 24 – 26 (Thursday – Saturday), 2004 in Seattle.

Genetic Programming Theory and Practice (GPTP) workshops at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 Genetic Programming Theory and Practice (GPTP) workshop to be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
2004 Asia-Pacific Workshop on Genetic Programming (ASPGP) held in Cairns, Australia on December 6-7 (Monday-Tuesday), 2004
Past GP conferences for 1996, 1997, and 1998 (including the SGA-98, the Symposium on Genetic Algorithms)
Past Euro-GP conferences for 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003
Past GECCO conferences (Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conferences) for 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Starting in 1999, the annual GECCO conference includes the annual Genetic Programming Conference.
About two dozen conferences with Published Proceedings that are held regularly in the field of genetic programming and genetic and evolutionary computation (GEC)

Application Areas for Genetic Programming

There are numerous applications of genetic programming. We are particularly interested in applying genetic programming to

“Black Art Problems,” such as the automated synthesis of analog electrical circuits, controllers, antennas, networks of chemical reactions, optical systems, and other areas of design,
“Programming The Unprogrammable” (PTU) involving the automatic creation of computer programs for unconventional computing devices such as cellular automata, multi-agent systems, parallel programming systems, field-programmable gate arrays, field-programmable analog arrays, ant colonies, swarm intelligence, distributed systems, and the like, and
Commercially Useful New Inventions (CUNI) involving the use of genetic programming as an automated "invention machine" for creating commercially usable new inventions.

We are constantly looking for new domain areas in which to apply the techniques of genetic programming to achieve human-competitive machine intelligence.

News about Genetic Programming

· For May 2003 IEEE Intelligent Systems article “What’s AI done for me lately? Genetic programming’s human-competitive results”, visit IEEE Intelligent Systems. Click here for PDF file.

· For February 2003 Scientific American article “Evolving inventions” on genetic programming by John Koza, Martin A. Keane, and Matthew J. Streeter, visit Scientific American.

· For Salon article on "Software that Writes Software" by Alexis Willihnganz (August 10, 1999)

· For E. E. Times article on automatic synthesis of analog electrical circuits using genetic programming.

· For article in Computerbits on genetic programming.

· For Scientific American article by W. Wayt Gibbs on genetic programming.

· For Business Week article (June 23, 1997) entitled "Stanford Eggheads and Entrepreneurs"

· For Business Week article (August 25, 1997) entitled "What Matters is How Smart You Are"

· For U. S. News and World Report article on evolutionary computation and genetic programming.

· For Slashdot.org posting (August 10, 1999).

· For the451.com article entitled "Re-inventing the 'invention machine" (April 14, 2000).

Parallelization of Genetic Programming

In July 1999, Genetic Programming Inc. started operating a new 1,000-node Beowulf-style parallel cluster computer consisting of 1,000 Pentium II 350 MHz processors and a host computer. Click here for technical discussion of parallel genetic programming and building the 1,000-Pentium Beowulf-style parallel cluster computer. About half of the 36 human-competitive results produced by genetic programming were obtained using computing systems that were substantially smaller than the 1,000-Pentium computer mentioned above. Fifteen of these human-competitive results were obtained on a 1995-vintage parallel computer system composed of 64 PowerPC 80 MHz processors with a spec95fp rating. This 1995-vintage computer has total computational power equal to only about 1/60 of that of the 1000-Pentium machine mentioned above. Five of these results were obtained on a 70-Alpha machine (whose spec95fp rating is 1/9 of that of the 1,000-Pentium machine mentioned above). One of these human competitive results were obtained with a 1994-vintage machine (whose spec95fp rating is 1/1,320 of that of the 1,000-Pentium machine mentioned above). The individual processors in the1,000-Pentium machine have (as of July 2003) about 1/8 the speed of processors contained in commercially available $999 laptops, so that the 1,000-Pentium machine is approximately equivalent to a 125-processor machine with 2003-vintage processors.

1000-Pentium Beowulf-Style Cluster Computer

(left and right sides) (July 29, 1999)

For picture of uninterruptable power supply (UPS) for new 1000-Pentium computer. Design and contracting of site for 1000-Pentium computer by Gordon Prill Inc. of Mountain View, California. The 1,000-Pentium machine was assembled by Stan Fox of the COMPAQ Sunnyvale Staging Center. For picture of earlier 70-node parallel computer with Senator Barbara Boxer (California), John Koza (back row), Oscar Stiffelman (front row), Forrest H Bennett III, and William Mydlowec. For picture of earlier 70-node parallel computer with Ellen Goldberg (President of Santa Fe Institute), John Koza, Forrest H Bennett III, and Oscar Stiffelman.

John Koza’s Publications on Genetic Programming

1992 book on genetic programming entitled Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection from The MIT Press. The MIT Press also publishes a videotape entitled Genetic Programming: The Movie associated with the first book. Click here for more information about this 1992 videotape.
1994 book on genetic programming entitled Genetic Programming II: Automatic Discovery of Reusable Programs from The MIT Press.
The MIT Press also publishes a videotape entitled Genetic Programming II Videotape: The Next Generation. associated with this second book. Click here for additional information about this 1994 videotape.
1999 book Genetic Programming III: Darwinian Invention and Problem Solving from Morgan Kaufmann (by John R. Koza, Forrest H Bennett III, David Andre, and Martin A. Keane). Morgan Kaufmann also publishes Genetic Programming III Videotape: Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence (by John R. Koza, Forrest H Bennett III, David Andre, Martin A. Keane, and Scott Brave). Click here for information about this 1999 videotape.

2003 book Genetic Programming IV: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence from Kluwer Academic Publishers (by John R. Koza, Martin A. Keane, Matthew J. Streeter, William Mydlowec, Jessen Yu, and Guido Lanza ) (ISBN 1-4020-7446-8) Kluwer Academic Publisher also publishes a DVD disk Genetic Programming IV: Video: Routine Human-Competitive Machine Intelligence (by John R. Koza, Martin A. Keane, Matthew J. Streeter, William Mydlowec, Jessen Yu, Guido Lanza, and David Fletcher) that is bound into this 2003 book.

Stanford University technical reports from the Computer Science Department and Stanford BioMedical Informatics of which I am author or co-author can be obtained on the web, including

STAN-TR-CS 1314 (1990) entitled Genetic Programming: A Paradigm for Genetically Breeding Populations of Computer Programs to Solve Problems
STAN-TR-CS 1528 (1994) entitled Architecture-Altering Operations for Evolving the Architecture of a Multi-Part Program in Genetic Programming
STAN-TR-CS 1542 (1995) entitled Parallel Genetic Programming on a Network of Transputers
SMI-95-0586 (1995) entitled A Programming Course in Bioinformatics for Computer and Information Science Students
SMI-2000-0851 (2000) entitled Reverse Engineering and Automatic Synthesis of Metabolic Pathways from Observed Data Using Genetic Programming

Abstracts, citations, and copies of research papers (almost all available in Post Script or PDF) by John Koza:

Click here for list of patents

Contact Information

Please send corrections or additions to this page to:

John R. Koza

Genetic Programming Inc. (Third Millennium On-Line Products Inc.)

Post Office Box K

Los Altos, California 94023 USA

FAX: 650-941-9430

E-mail: koza@genetic-programming.com

E-mail: koza@genetic-programming.org

· For information about the annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) operated by the Association for Computing Special Interest Group on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (SIGEVO)

· For information about the annual Human-Competitive Awards (the “humies”) in genetic and evolutionary computation offered at the annual Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO)

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

· The home page of John R. Koza (including online versions of most published papers)

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

· For information about National Popular Vote

· 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.

· 4,000+ 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

· For information on the Genetic Programming book series, see the Call For Book Proposals