Author: derrick gatewood
Date: 21:33:26 06/26/01
ok, I made some general statements about AI and chess and how they have been closely related... this is the response I get back. I was wondering what you guys think about this. If you can rip its reasoning apart, please do. I would like a little support when I do it =) "Umm.. Lets see. Chess programs and AI. Of course what follows is an Opinion, but here goes anway.. What exactly *is* intellegence? According to Websters: Main Entry: in·tel·li·gence Pronunciation: in-'te-l&-j&n(t)s Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin intelligentia, from intelligent-, intelligens intelligent Date: 14th century 1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations. To learn or understand.... Chess programs do neither. What chess programs do is heuristic search of various board configurations using a Minumum and Maximum approach. Each board configuration had a heuristic value associtated with it saying how good or bad it is for a certain side. All a chess program does is search this database for the next move that has the best score for it and the worst score for the opponet. Its only slightly more complex then a sequal query searching for your friend Joe's phone number. It does not learn or understrand, hence its not intellegent although its commonly called AI. Real AI doesnt exist and were no where near making it. When you can tell a computer an Aesops fable and it can give you the moral of the story, then you will have an AI, not any sooner. Big blue didnt beat that russian chess player (I forget his name), a team of people beat him, the IBM chess programming team. Chess has been distiled to a mathimatcal abstraction and it still takes super computers forever to find the best solution. Something as abstract as Starcraft, for instance, is VASTLY more complex then chess. To compare the size of the problem would be like comparing a grain of sand to the sun (chess being the grain of sand). Even that might not be big enough. In chess there are only a few units, and they all interact with other units in the same fashion, if they can move into a spot cointaining another unit, the other unit is destroyed. Not only are there far more units in starcraft then in chess, but there are far, far more board positions and each unit can interact with other units in differnt manners. IE: Hydrolisk vs a ling is differnt then a Hydrolisk vs a ling in a dark swarm. Now games like EQ and AO make Starcraft look like a tinker toy. Again the world is MUCH bigger then in Starcraft and the units are much more complex and the enviroment is much much more complex. Whats the point? Its not gonna happen until we get something like HAL, and HAL isnt even on the drawing board. Give it up. "
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