Harnessing the Computational Power of Fluids for Optimization of Collective Decision Making
Harnessing the Computational Power of Fluids for Optimization of Collective Decision Making
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DOI：
10.3390/philosophies1030245
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发表时间：
2016-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
0.9
通讯作者：
Aono, Masashi
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kim, Song-Ju;Naruse, Makoto;Aono, Masashi
我们如何才能利用自然的力量进行计算？我们的社会由一群人组成，每个人处理的决策任务被抽象为从一组随机提供回报的选项中寻找最有利可图的选项的计算问题。社会期望总回报最大化，而个体则为共同回报而竞争。这种集体决策被表述为“竞争性多臂强盗问题(CBP)”。在这里，我们展示了一种模拟计算设备，它在耦合的圆柱体中使用大量的流体来有效地求解CBP以最大化社会回报，而不需要支付常规所需的巨大计算成本。流体估计用于开发过去知识的选项的回报概率，并产生用于探索新知识的随机波动，对于新知识，利用流体衍生的波动比应用人工波动更有利。当用传统的数字计算机进行模拟时，流体衍生的波动需要指数级的组合努力，在处理比CBP更复杂的问题时，将显示出最大的计算能力。延长该设备目前的配置将引发与利用自然现象的巨大计算能力来解决各种复杂的社会问题相关的进一步研究。
How can we harness nature's power for computations? Our society comprises a collection of individuals, each of whom handles decision-making tasks that are abstracted as computational problems of finding the most profitable option from a set of options that stochastically provide rewards. Society is expected to maximize the total rewards, while the individuals compete for common rewards. Such collective decision making is formulated as the "competitive multi-armed bandit problem (CBP)." Herein, we demonstrate an analog computing device that uses numerous fluids in coupled cylinders to efficiently solve CBP for the maximization of social rewards, without paying the conventionally-required huge computational cost. The fluids estimate the reward probabilities of the options for the exploitation of past knowledge, and generate random fluctuations for the exploration of new knowledge for which the utilization of the fluid-derived fluctuations is more advantageous than applying artificial fluctuations. The fluid-derived fluctuations, which require exponentially-many combinatorial efforts when they are emulated using conventional digital computers, would exhibit their maximal computational power when tackling classes of problems that are more complex than CBP. Extending the current configuration of the device would trigger further studies related to harnessing the huge computational power of natural phenomena to solve a wide variety of complex societal problems.