Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 00:20:07 03/14/01
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On March 13, 2001 at 19:06:27, HECTOR MUNOZ wrote: >There are some who might argue that a computer chess program is not a >demonstration of intelligence in particular, a program which uses Shannon's >Type A Approach. I need to present a solid argument that such a program >does involve intelligence. Everyone tries to answer this question without figuring out what they mean by "intelligence" first. The OED definition takes the better part of a page, and gives various usages dating back to 1390, although some aspects of the word are extremely new. In particular, the use of the term "intelligence quotient" is said to date back only to 1921, as expressed in English. That's the part of the definition that gets everyone tied up in knots these days. The first definition is "[t]he faculty of understanding; intellect." The second one is "[u]nderstanding as a quality of admitting of degree; spec. superior understanding; quickness of mental apprehension, sagacity." The others don't seem to apply much. I don't think the dictionary is very helpful here. This word seems too large for the dictionary. Perhaps someone has written a book or an article that gets to the point, but failing that, I'll take a crack at it, as it relates to computer programs. I believe that intelligence is displayed if a program can generalize effectively within a sufficiently complex problem domain. It's not enough to be able to handle specific cases, it must be possible to be effective in a wide variety of cases, via the use of general-purpose code. Chess, a game that has fascinated humans for hundreds of years in its current form, and much longer if we allow for precursor forms, seems like it would qualify as a sufficiently difficult domain. Humans devote their lives to the game and the game remains fresh and challenging. I believe that the current programs generalize very well. They can play essentially any position. There are some that cause them problems, but there are a great many that they play well enough to challenge a strong human when the human plays against the program, and they can be used even by very strong humans in order to provide insight in very difficult positions. These positions are rarely foreseen by the program's author, but the program is still very effective. I think that intelligence is essentially the ability to effectively handle difficult specific cases with general-purpose methods, and the chess domain, while very specific, is rich enough that it requires the ability to generalize in order to tackle the wide variety of practical cases a program is apt to face. Copyright (C) Bruce Moreland, 2001. All rights reserved. Permission to use all or part of the above in a homework assignment is given only under the condition that any quotation is accurately attributed. bruce
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