Exploring self‐organized emergence in an agent‐based synthetic warfare lab

Abstract

Artificial‐life techniques – specifically, agent‐based models and evolutionary learning algorithms – provide a potentially powerful new approach to understanding some of the fundamental processes of war. This paper introduces a simple artificial‐like “toy model” of combat called Enhanced ISAAC Neural Simulation Tool (EINSTein). EINSTein is designed to illustrate how certain aspects of land combat can be viewed as self‐organized, emergent phenomena resulting from the dynamical web of interactions among notional combatants. EINSTein's bottom‐up, synthesist approach to the modeling of combat stands in stark contrast to the more traditional top‐down, or reductionist approach taken by conventional military models, and represents a step toward developing a complex systems theoretic toolbox for identifying, exploring, and possibly exploiting self‐organized emergent collective patterns of behavior on the real battlefield. A description of the model is provided, along with examples of emergent agent patterns and behaviors.

Citation

Ilachinski, A. (2003), "Exploring self‐organized emergence in an agent‐based synthetic warfare lab", Kybernetes, Vol. 32 No. 1/2, pp. 38-76. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920310452337