this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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This isn’t exactly new. I heard a few years ago about a situation where the ai had these wires on the chip that should not do anything as they didn’t go anywhere , but if they removed it the chip stopped working correctly.
So the wires did something
Flashback to the 1960s, Magic and More Magic
https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html
It may interest you to know that the switch still exists. https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/1232
That was a different technique, using simulated evolution in an FPGA.
An algorithm would create a series of random circuit designs, program the FPGA with them, then evaluate how well each one accomplished a task. It would then take the best design, create a series of random variations on it, and select the best one. Rinse and repeat until the circuit is really good at performing the task.
I think this is what I am thinking of. Kind of a predecessor of modern machine learning.
It is a form of machine learning
Which is just stochastic optimisation.
Which yes is exactly what evolution does, big picture. Small picture the genome evolves a bit more intelligently, using not random generation and filtering but an algorithm employing randomness to generate, and then the usual survival filter because doing it that way is, well, fitter. Also what you can see under a microscope.
I don’t know about AI involvement but this story in general is very very old.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
I thought of this as well. In fact, as a bit of fun I added a switch to a rack at our lab in a similar way with the same labels. This one though does nothing, but people did push the "turbo" button on old pc boxes despite how often those buttons weren't connected.
Some weren't connected? For most PCs that had it, it was a real thing, though counterintuitive and marketing-speak, because enabling "turbo" was just normal speed and disabling would run in a slower mode for compatibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button
After the 486, there were pentiums built at shops that still used 486 cases. In my experience the button wasn't plugged in.
My turbo button was connected to an LED but that was it
I remember that as well.
Edit; moved comment to correct reply.
Yeah, I've stumbled upon that one a while back too, probably. Was it also the one where the initial designs would refuse to work outside the room temperature 'til the ai was asked to take temps into account?
Sounds like RF reflection used like a data capacitor or something.
Yeah, that probably sounds so unintuitive and weird to anyone who has never worked with RF.
The particular example was getting clock-like behavior without a clock. It had an incomplete circuit that used RF reflection or something very similar to simulate a clock. Of course, removing this dead-end circuit broke the design.
I remember this too, it was years and years ago (I almost want to say 2010-2015). Can't find anything searching for it
You helped me narrow it down. I expect Adrian Thompson's research from the 90s, referenced in this Wikipedia article is what you're thinking of.
Yes! Exactly this thank you
(I should have gone with my gut, I knew it was ages ago. 30ish years by the sound of it!)
Perhaps you're an AI who only hallucinated a circuit design.
:)
It's been found. Adrian Thompson's research from almost 30 years ago..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvable_hardware