Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 17:20:24 06/09/00
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On June 09, 2000 at 07:55:15, Graham Laight wrote: >Ah - now I understand! Thanks for taking the time to clarify that. > >You earlier said that concrete + steel together are stronger than either one >alone. However, it may be that steel alone is actually stronger than concrete >and steel combined. In this instance, steel represents knowledge, and concrete >represents search. For computer programmers, concrete seems to be available in >abundance, but steel is in relatively short supply. For humans, it's the other >way around. The reinforced concrete example is running out of gas, but I'd like to point out that perhaps a difference between you and I is that I never even considered the impracticality of building with solid steel. I took into account expense and other practical aspects. You seem to be less bound by the notion that what is discussed needs to be practical. >A human relies, compared to computers, almost 100% on knowledge - yet some of >them can still beat the silicon players. They do this by: > >1. Evaluating the positions they see very well, and > >2. Pruning their search. Good players don't look at many moves in most >positions. > >The humans run into trouble mainly because they have removed from their search a >line which they should have examined, but which they actually pruned out in the >interests of time. > >What the programmers have not yet succeeded is in doing is what ultimately has >to be done if computers are to become clearly better than the top humans without >having to wait for Moore's Law to deliver sufficient search speed: address the >issue of managing a large amount of knowledge sufficiently well (and in an >easily maintainable way!) so that when a node is being evaluated, or a decision >is being made about whether to extend the search at this node, the most relevant >knowledge for this type of position can be quickly made available. It is now the year 2000, as opposed to when we first discussed this sort of thing, which was 1997 or 1998, and Moore's law is way out ahead and getting further ahead every day. The knowledge base approach appears to be still somewhere near the starting line. bruce
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