2024/01/21 by Christian Cabrera, Cabrera, Christian, Andrei Paleyes +3 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Evolutionary Algorithms and Applications #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Software Engineering (cs.SE) #Software Engineering Research #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.11370
openalex publication_date 2024/01/21 · openalex created_date 2024/01/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Software systems impact society at different levels as they pervasively solve real-world problems. Modern software systems are often so sophisticated that their complexity exceeds the limits of human comprehension. These systems must respond to changing goals, dynamic data, unexpected failures, and security threats, among other variable factors in real-world environments. Systems' complexity challenges their interpretability and requires autonomous responses to dynamic changes. Two main research areas explore autonomous systems' responses: evolutionary computing and autonomic computing. Evolutionary computing focuses on software improvement based on iterative modifications to the source code. Autonomic computing focuses on optimising systems' performance by changing their structure, behaviour, or environment variables. Approaches from both areas rely on feedback loops that accumulate knowledge from the system interactions to inform autonomous decision-making. However, this knowledge is often limited, constraining the systems' interpretability and adaptability. This paper proposes a new concept for interpretable and adaptable software systems: self-sustaining software systems (S4). S4 builds knowledge loops between all available knowledge sources that define modern software systems to improve their interpretability and adaptability. This paper introduces and discusses the S4 concept.