From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!torn!utcsri!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!rosie!neuron.next.com Tue Jun 23 13:21:23 EDT 1992
Article 6329 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: paulking@neuron.next.com (Paul King)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: 5-step program to AI
Keywords: chess
Message-ID: <4135@rosie.NeXT.COM>
Date: 20 Jun 92 01:08:04 GMT
References: <60848@aurs01.UUCP>
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Reply-To: paulking@next.com
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throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:
> Computers generate many positions that are guaranteed to be reachable
> by legal play from the current position, and then evaluate them for
> strategic and tactical "goodness".
> 
> Humans, on the other hand, (seem to) generate a few positions that
> are guaranteed to have strategic and tactical "goodness", and then
> evaluate the possible paths from the current position towards them.

This sounds right on.

I wonder if the difference is in what consitutes a "move".  To
the computer, a move is the placement of a piece, and excellence
is acheived by examining 1,000,000 such moves.

The human, I speculate, perceives "moves" and "board positions" at
many levels.  At the lowest level, a move is the placement of
a piece in a board full of pieces.  But at a higher level, the
human perceives imagined structures, such as controlled diagonals,
tripley-gaurded squares, and pieces under attack.  At a
still higher level, the human perceives sturdy defense structures,
areas of vulerability, risky pieces, and fork opportunities.

The human conceptualizes "moves" as shifts of power,
rearrangement of control, and construction of a familiar attack
configuration.  The human evaluates a dozen reachable macro-moves
at this level, and then at more and more detailed levels until
this abstract thinking is reduced to a particular "next move".
But these "higher level" moves span many turns and are not always
discrete (unlike a piece-move).

It is like driving a car.  One thinks of "turning the corner",
not of rotating the wheel, or even of lifting one arm and
lowering the other.

Paul
paulking@next.com


