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Subject: Re: Knowledge based program?

Author: Dave Gomboc

Date: 14:28:41 05/03/99

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On May 02, 1999 at 14:42:38, Peter Fendrich wrote:

>On May 02, 1999 at 12:19:18, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
>>>There are (at least) two ways to use the term Knowledge-based:
>>> 1) Strictly as in the AI field. I know of no program worth mentioning
>>>    that uses knowledge engineering, knowledge bases or something like
>>>    that. I don't even think it would be a good idea...
>>
>>Well, as a graduate student in the AI field, I hope that Christophe and you will
>>permit me my insistance that _this_ is the way that attaches real semantic
>>meaning to the term, and other uses debase the term's value.
>
>Don't get me wrong here Dave! I said exactly this in some other
>"Knowledge"-thread 3-4 weeks ago. I worked for 8 years in Volvo Data's AI group
>and during the 8'th year I was the manager of the AI department.
>Then we also should be able to agree on that none of the active chess-programs
>today are knowledge-based in this sense.
>
>>> 2) In a more general way, meaning that the program is build up by more or less
>>>    *pure* chess knowledge.
>>>    There are no *pure* chess knowledge in the program. Everything in the
>>>    program has to be tuned, including the chess knowledge. It is not possible
>>>    to include some evaluation term without thinking about how it cooperates
>>>    with the search. For the same reason it is not possible to make good
>>>    changes in the search heuristics without thinking about how it affects
>>>    the evaluation code. The different parts of the program has to work together
>>>    as a whole. The best program as a whole has the best chess knowledge.
>>>    Of course we have something called luck but that's another story... :)
>>
>>The best program as a whole might not have the best chess knowkedge, it might
>>simply execute compute things more quicky.  The computer is not self-aware that
>>it is computing something more quickly than it would had it chosen an
>>alternative way, so I reject that e.g. code optimization implies more knowledge,
>>even though performance may be improved.
>
>Now we are arguing about what chess-knowledge is. It's hard to define and hard
>to capture. Chess-knowledge in a program using search is not the same as
>chess-knowledge in peoples mind.
>There are many ways to optimize the code. One example is to change some
>evaluation term and make it simpler so search goes faster. If this change makes
>the program a better chess player, where is the chess knowledge now? Before the
>change, the programs evaluation term was maybe better expressed and that made it
>easy to find this specific chunk of knowledge. After the change the same
>knowledge is handled by a combination of the faster search, the simpler code and
>the other evaluation terms that are working together. The knowledge is there but
>hard to find.
>//Peter

I am not terribly interested in arguing about what chess knowledge is.  I am
interested in making the distinction between knowledge-based and search-based
methods.  I think we all agree that more chess knowledge can help you search
better.

Dave



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