Group Report: The Behavior of Natural and Artificial Systems: Solutions to Functional Demands

At the current state there is no unified view onto the functional demands and their solutions in natural and artificial systems. Artificial systems have well-defined inputs and their desired outputs are given in terms of system requirements that are defined by the users or designers of the systems. Natural systems, on the other hand, have evolved in order to survive in a complex environment. As we lack complete knowledge of the constraints given by the outside world, we cannot clearly de­ fine the actual optimization goal that implicitly un­ derlies the observed organism. However, some striking features in natural organisms seem to be powerful solutions to functional demands. Some of these solutions are by far not yet achieved in artificial systems. The most striking examples are the capabilities of the human brain to process nat­ ural languages and to build up concepts of the world. However, also small brains, even in insects, seem to incorporate powerful solutions to tasks that are not yet captured by computer systems, e.g., in object recognition and flight control. In the working group we discussed some areas where artificial and natural systems seem to have