Neuroevolution with box mutation: An adaptive and modular framework for evolving deep neural networks
Frederico J. J. B. Santos, Ivo Gonçalves, Mauro Castelli · Applied Soft Computing · 2023
The pursuit of self-evolving neural networks has driven the emerging field of Evolutionary Deep Learning, which combines the strengths of Deep Learning and Evolutionary Computation. This work presents a novel method for evolving deep neural networks by adapting the principles of Geometric Semantic Genetic Programming, a subfield of Genetic Programming, and Semantic Learning Machine. Our approach integrates evolution seamlessly through natural selection with the optimization power of backpropagation in deep learning, enabling the incremental growth of neural networks’ neurons across generations. By evolving neural networks that achieve nearly 89% accuracy on the CIFAR-10 dataset with relatively few parameters, our method demonstrates remarkable efficiency, evolving in GPU minutes compared to the field standard of GPU days.