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Subject: Re: How to Improve Planning Ability of Engines?

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 14:13:38 05/17/02

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On May 17, 2002 at 15:39:34, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote:

>Innovative approaches and breakthroughs are NOT found in the private or
>commercial areas (with few exceptions). They are found in Universities or funded
>by governments or non-for-profit foundations. Private companies do not have the
>money or the time to think "100% free". This is coarse generalization but it is
>quite close to the truth.
>I would not be surprised that "planning in games" comes from an University
>rather than from a commercial programmer. It might not be in a form of
>alpha-beta though, who knows?. You can expect that later this idea is improved
>dramatically by the commercial guys in little time. That is the way basic and
>applied sciences work.
>
>Regards,
>Miguel

My point was that this is a question that has been basically unanswered because
we simply don't know the answers, that is, "we" the general public do not know
the answer. He seems to have the attitude that he's going to ask this question
and someone is going to come out and say, "Oh yeah sorry about that guys, I've
known about this for years but I just never told anyone. I was just waiting for
someone to ask, so here ya go, here's everything you need to know! Enjoy!" and
that's not going to happen. I mean either no one knows the answer to his
question, or someone does and they haven't shared it with anyone yet, and they
certainly aren't going to start because someone asked on CCC.

My comments about the answer comming from the "commercial" sector was slightly
misinterpreted by you. When we speak of "commercial" programs, we're talking
about Fritz, Tiger, Shredder, Junior, Rebel, etc. etc., and the truth of the
matter is that in the "commercial" computer chess world, being a "commercial"
program doesn't mean the same thing as it does in other areas of the world. Your
point is usually correct. Microsoft probably isn't going to make any great
scientific breakthroughs, and the ones they do aren't very significant when
compared with the academic world's breakthroughs. The commercial computer chess
scene is different however. Most of the authors of the commercial chess programs
started off as amateur programmers. They made breakthroughs (which they
obviously aren't telling anyone and everyone about, which is perfectly
understandable) and since they made breakthroughs, they eventually became
commercial programs. So those guys have a track record for making these kinds of
breakthroughs, and maybe even more so than someone at a university AI department
would. I don't see any program from MIT beating the daylights out of Fritz or
Tiger.

The other side of the coin is Chinook, developed at a university, and able to
beat all but one human. Okay, maybe technically Chinook beat Tinsley, but it
wasn't in his prime and it wasn't exactly a well earned win since it came from a
forfiet. Nevertheless, he seems to have been the only opponent (human or
computer) that stood a chance against the machine.

So I'm not saying that university studies won't produce something similar in
chess. But in computer chess, these kinds of breakthroughs thar are not typical
in the regular commercial world are certainly reasonable possibilities.

In any case, you're going to either find what you're looking for in some AI
journal after a lot of digging for what you want, or you're going to have to
figure it out on your own. That's what I think anyway.

Russell



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