Link: Unnatural Selection by Sam Williams in MIT Technology Review

The program had little trouble generating simple designs that matched those patented in the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, Koza began referring to the program as an “invention machine” and created a Web page that tracks the latest discoveries by “human competitive” software. By the time Koza’s group tested the fourth or fifth versions of their program, however, something even more surprising began to happen: the program kicked out circuit designs unpublished anywhere in the patent literature. Two of these designs—a pair of controller circuits that regu?late feedback—were so original that Koza and his colleagues have taken out patents on them. As proud as he is of his software, Koza isn’t about to assign responsibility for the new designs to the program itself. The patents credit Keane, Koza, and Streeter, in that order. But there are a few new pseudophilosophical conundrums lurking here: If something is invented with no human near, is it really an invention? Who is the inventor? And if the invention actually works, does it matter if we don’t understand how?