Artificial immune systems - a new emerging technology of computational intelligence - implications on development of the autonomous intelligent systems, data mining and other hybrid intelligent systems

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are sometimes still considered with an attitude of reserve by most practitioners in Computational Intelligence (CI), much more, some of them even considering this emergent computing paradigm to be in an infancy stage. Recently, however, a lot of basic models and algorithms based on components of the artificial immune-based systems have been developed and are used in a variety of applications. Further on, the focusing of Computational Intelligence on the emerging field of the AIS led to very effective hybrid intelligent systems of AIS with other CI paradigms. This tutorial will present why AIS are of interest, starting from the real- world of applications asking for a radical change of the information systems framework. The component-based framework is replaced with an agent- based one, where the system complexity requires that any agent be clearly featured by its autonomy. The AIS methods build adaptive large-scale multi- agent systems that are open to the environment, systems that are not at all fixed just after the design phase, but are real-time adaptive to unpredictable situations and malicious defects. The AIS perform the defence of a complex system against malicious defects achieving its survival strategy by extension of the concept of organization of multicellular organisms to the information systems. The main behavioural features of the AIS - as self-maintenance, distributed and adaptive computational systems - are defined and described in relation to the Immune System as an information system. A comparison of the AIS methodology with other Intelligent Technologies is another point of the tutorial. The overview of some actual AIS applications is made using a practical engineering design strategy that views AIS as very effective software with agent-based architecture.