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From: jeff@festival.ed.ac.uk (J W Dalton)
Subject: Re: FIRST order?
References: <3tqkvc$bh@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <3u3luh$a56@saba.info.ucla.edu>  <jqbDBpCx1.o5@netcom.com> <3u78iv$pvd@saba.info.ucla.edu>
Message-ID: <DByx99.C4H@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 14:51:08 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:31689 comp.ai.philosophy:30554 sci.logic:12739 sci.cognitive:8422

zeleny@sepulveda.math.ucla.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter) writes:

>>Samuel claimed long ago to have been surprised by the solutions arrived at by
>>his checkers program, which played much better than he.  Unless you want to
>>argue that he was so thoroughly acquainted with its programming that he
>>shouldn't have been surprised by its ability to surprise him.  One could
>>likewise argue that people's solutions should not surprise anyone thoroughly
>>acquainted with their biology.  [...]

>This is not a good analogy.  The program's solutions can be readily
>predicted from its design and implementation.

Perhaps not so readily as it may seem.  I don't know how much
you know about the checkers program -- perhaps you've already taken
this into account.  Anyway, the program had a fairly complex
position evaluation function that involved a number of factors
with adjustable weights.  It then went through a "learning"
process, playing games against humans and againt itself.
The resulting abilities were probably rather difficult to
predict.

The program also used a fairly sophisticated search method,
one that looked deepest at the most promising lines of play.
The program was sufficiently early in the history of AI
that people may not have had a very good "feel" for what
such an approach could do.

These points may also serve to suggest that Samuel should not
have been surprised by the program's ability to surprise him.

-- jeff
