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Subject: Re: Emulating Humans: An Approximation

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 17:01:10 10/31/02

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On October 31, 2002 at 17:00:19, Bob Durrett wrote:

>
>Solving the general problem of emulating the chess play of "humanity" might be a
>prohibitively difficult task.
>

This has been the "holy grail" of AI since its early days.  But the problem is,
in 25 words or less "we have no idea how a person does what he does when playing
chess (or anything else for that matter), which makes it _impossible_ to emulate
what we don't understand."





>Perhaps a lesser accomplishment would be "good enough."  For example, one could
>select a dozen or more specific humans and then emulate them individually.  If
>the group of humans selected for emulation were chosen wisely, maybe they would
>represent [or "cover"] the entire population reasonably well.  The larger the
>group, the better they could represent the entire population of human
>chessplayers.
>
>Suppose someone with a 2800 rating were selected and called opponent #1.
>Then someone with a 2700 rating might be selected and called opponent #2.
>This could be continued until the rating was so low that there would be no need
>for more.
>
>#1 = 2800, #2 = 2700, #3 = 2600, #4 = 2500, etc.
>
>The next step might be to expand the list by having several individuals at each
>level but with different playing styles.
>
>There should be quite a few distinct emulated humans at the amateur levels,
>since that's where most of the people using the program would be.
>
>The intent maybe should be to emulate these people primarily in the middlegame
>and maybe endgame.  The opening repertoires of the individuals might also be
>copied but that might not be such a good idea unless the repertoires were large.
> A typical amateur might not have a complete opening repertoire at all.  In this
>case, one might be provided for him.
>
>To select a specific individual to be emulated, it would be necessary to have a
>fairly large collection of his/her games played at the desired performance
>level.  Such a collection might be hard to find for amateurs.
>
>How could the chess play of a specific individual be emulated without such a
>collection of games?  Maybe general well-known traits of chessplayers at the
>level being considered could be used to synthesize an emulation in that case.
>
>The emulations could then be used in a chess-playing program designed to serve
>as a training tool.  People would train against the emulated individuals at
>their level in preparation for future contests with humans.
>
>Clearly, this would be inferior to a full-scale emulation of all of the
>chessplayers in the World.  For example, if the number of individuals emulated
>were too small, one might "learn" the individual traits of the specific
>individual emulated.  After that, playing against that specific emulated
>individual might become boring.
>
>Care would be required to assure that the games would have some variability.
>This could be done in the opening, especially.  Maybe a random number generator
>would be used to randomly select the openings.  This is surely done by most or
>all programs using an opening book anyway.
>
>Bob D.



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