AI Fishbowl

The reports that once took me days had been automated and otherwise my work was done. I talked to Keith and convinced him to let me spend a little time getting better at access, doing a little coding. He seemed to think it was a good idea, not wanting to work too hard figuring out how to keep me busy.

I walked back to my cube, which in those days was just across from him, and looked at my computer. The yellow plastic Twinkie cowboy and the Beanie Baby spider looked on approvingly. They seemed to know I had just been given permission to do my own pet project on company time

I pulled up my chair and opened the first blank module. There was no reason to hide anything. No one in my area had any chance of reading the code and most people see the rows of numbers and letters, make the sign of the cross and flee. If asked, I could easily answer I was learning more visual basic, so I could do more work with the benefit books. They didn't need to know I was making electronic fish.

Yes, that's right, my first foray into artificial intelligence was to simulate fish. The thought was starting with something that was very basic, giving it simple life cycle type drives and see what happened. In my mind I see me wearing the long white scientists coat, I am hunched over me experiment, which you can't see because of the huge mass of unkept hair I have on my head. You know it it me though, because of the unstable bursts of laughter.

"Did you say something?" Keith asks and my laugh catches in my throat.

"No, just trying to figure something out."

I build the fishbowl first. A form with a grid of boxes 8 high and 12 across. I fill it with water, make the whole thing blue, so the boxes disappear into the background color. I give them names to make it clear what row and column each box is in. This is important if my fish are to swim.

I define how they will be born. Decide when they will start looking and how they will select a mate. I program the age they will stop mating and the odds of having offspring per cycle. When they get old. When they die.

I set the first two free. They look nothing like fish. They are colored boxes that move from place to place in the blue square I call a bowl. They don't find each other. They don't have baby fish. They get old and die.

The next time I put 8 in the bowl. 8 different colored squares. A few of them face the same fate as the first two, but the others have a flood of offspring, blending the colored of the parents. Then thy have offspring. Soon the bowl is full of pink and yellow squares crowding each other for space. I can't contain my joy.

I play with the variables and start over. I make more thing change with reproduction and mate selection. I cause color preference and watch the population shift. I loose myself in fishbowl of my own making.

It is time to go, but I am not done. Tomorrow I will add food and maybe war.