Evolutionary Multitasking: A Computer Science View of Cognitive Multitasking

The human mind possesses the most remarkable ability to perform multiple tasks with apparent simultaneity. In fact, with the present-day explosion in the variety and volume of incoming information streams that must be absorbed and appropriately processed, the opportunity, tendency, and (even) the need to multitask are unprecedented. Thus, it comes as little surprise that the pursuit of intelligent systems and algorithms that are capable of efficient multitasking is rapidly gaining importance among contemporary scientists who are faced with the increasing complexity of real-world problems. To this end, the present paper is dedicated to a detailed exposition on a so-far underexplored characteristic of population-based search algorithms, i.e., their inherent ability (much like the human mind) to handle multiple optimization tasks at once. We present a simple evolutionary methodology capable of cross-domain multitask optimization in a unified genotype space and show that there exist many potential benefits of its application in practical domains. Most notably, it is revealed that multitasking enables one to automatically leverage upon the underlying commonalities between distinct optimization tasks, thereby providing the scope for considerably improved performance in real-world problem solving.