Abstract

Back-propagation learning (Rumelhart, Hinton and Williams, 1986) is a useful research tool but it has a number of undesiderable features such as having the experimenter decide from outside what should be learned. We describe a number of simulations of neural networks that internally generate their own teaching input. The networks generate the teaching input by trasforming the network input through connection weights that are evolved using a form of genetic algorithm. What results is an innate (evolved) capacity not to behave efficiently in an environment but to learn to behave efficiently. The analysis of what these networks evolve to learn shows some interesting results.

Citations