genetic programming

In artificial intelligence, genetic programming (GP) is an evolutionary algorithm-based methodology inspired by biological evolution to find computer programs that perform a user-defined task. Essentially GP is a set of instructions and a fitness function to measure how well a computer has performed a task. It is a specialization of genetic algorithms (GA) where each individual is a computer program. It is a machine learning technique used to optimize a population of computer programs according to a fitness landscape determined by a program's ability to perform a given computational task.

Is this really a real thing? how do you even generate and mutate programs?

>>49
NO! That's just useless. Why use GA for simple things, when anything your GA comes up with, your CPU already does faster? Instead, try to get an algorithm that calculates, say, the Riemann zeta function to a certain precision and is fast. Then I'll be impressed. So far I've never ever seen anything come out of GAs (or neural nets) that isn't a Rube Goldberg solution for some trivial problem.