Contributed talk in Lightning Talks, July 30, 2019, 10 a.m. in room USB.1.006

Self-Replication in Neural Networks

Thomas Gabor, Steffen Illium, Andy Mattausch, Lenz Belzner, Claudia Linnhoff-Popien

watch Publication The foundation of biological structures is self-replication. Neural networks are the prime structure used for the emergent construction of complex behavior in computers. We analyze how various network types lend themselves to self-replication. We argue that backpropagation is the natural way to navigate the space of network weights and show how it allows non-trivial self-replicators to arise naturally. We then extend the setting to construct an artificial chemistry environment of several neural networks.