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July 20, 2000

Evolutionary Checkers Research Earns Cover of 'Intelligence' Magazine

La Jolla, CA - Researchers at Natural Selection, Inc. have been investigating the prospects for having evolutionary algorithms optimize neural networks that play checkers. Kumar Chellapilla, senior staff scientist, and Dr. David B. Fogel, executive vice president and chief scientist, and have collaborated on a program that teaches itself how to play checkers without relying on human expertise. It starts by knowing the position, location, and number of pieces on the board, and then plays games in an Darwinian contest between neural networks that represent different strategies for playing the game. Those networks that do better are retained to serve as parents for the next generation, while the losing neural networks are killed off. Over several hundred generations, this evolutionary algorithm has created a neural network that can play checkers at the level of human experts.

The current issue of Intelligence magazine, the publication of the special interest group on artificial intelligence from the ACM, features a cover story on Chellapilla and Fogel's efforts. Interested parties can obtain a copy of the article by emailing Dr. David Fogel at dfogel@natural-selection.com. Natural Selection, Inc. is currently pursuing the application of similar technologies to problems in military conflict, particularly in the identification of new combat tactics.

Natural Selection, Inc.^Ò was founded in 1993 to address complex problems in industry, medicine, and defense. The company possesses unique expertise in computational intelligence techniques, including evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic. The corporation's research efforts support the discovery of new pharmaceuticals, the automated detection and diagnosis of breast cancer from film-screen mammograms, optical character recognition, and a variety of military and industrial projects.

For more information, please contact:

Dr. David B. Fogel,
Executive Vice President & Chief Scientist,
Natural Selection, Inc.,
3333 N. Torrey Pines Ct.,
Suite 200,
La Jolla, CA, 92037
tel: (619) 455-6449
fax: (619) 455-1560
dfogel@natural-selection.com

and please visit our web site at http://www.natural-selection.com/.