The emperor is naked: Evolutionary algorithms for real-world applications

Abstract

<jats:p>During the past 35 years the evolutionary computation research community has been studying properties of evolutionary algorithms. Many claims have been made---these varied from a promise of developing an automatic programming methodology to solving virtually any optimization problem (as some evolutionary algorithms are problem independent). However, the most important claim was related to applicability of evolutionary algorithms to solving very complex business problems, i.e. problems, where other techniques failed. So it might be worthwhile to revisit this claim and to search for evolutionary algorithm-based software applications, which were accepted by businesses and industries. In this article Zbigniew Michalewicz attempts to identify reasons for the mismatch between the efforts of hundreds of researchers who make substantial contribution to the field of evolutionary computation and the number of real-world applications, which are based on concepts of evolutionary algorithms.</jats:p>