These stories remind me of a story from Discover Magazine https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/evolving-a-consc...
A researcher was using a process to "evolve" a FPGA and the result was a circuit that was super efficient but worked in ways that were unexpected: part of the circuit seemed unconnected to the rest but if removed the whole thing stopped working and it would only work at a specific temperature.
> As with Thompson's FPGA exploiting some subtle physical properties of the device, Layzell found that evolved circuits could rely on external factors. For example, whilst trying to evolve an oscillator Bird and Layzell discovered that evolution was using part of the circuit for a radio antenna, and picking up emissions from the environment [18]. Layzell also found that evolved circuits were sensitive to whether or not a soldering iron was plugged in (not even switched on) in another part of the room[19]. ...
However, OP was actually referring to an experiment by Dr Adrian Thompson which was different but also sort of similar. The FPGA evolved by Thompson ended up depending on parts of the circuit that were disconnected from the main circuit but still affected its operation. It probably relied on electromagnetic properties, so was sort of a radio, but it did not rely on the clock of a nearby computer.
I mistakenly made a two AM radios in my electronics classes, from trying to make an amplifier and a PLL. The FM radio was mistakenly made while trying to make an AM radio. :-|
I can't believe someone dropped a link to this story. I remember reading this and feeling like it broadened my sense of what evolutionary processes can produce.
I believe I remember reading about that in the book "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose back in the late 90s. It was something that has stuck with me ever since, even though I didn't follow up on the AI route.
It's interesting to see these unconventional solutions. Genetic algorithms evolving antenna design produce similar illogical but very efficient designs. Humans have a draw to aesthetic. Robots don't have such limitations.
