Could Deep Blue play a smarter AI ?

[5cats]

cognito ergo sum

I don't think of it as circular logic, rather as a self-supporting statement.
That doesn't mean it isn't CL, from your point of view, of course.

To be clear, someday there will be a computer so fast and a program so advanced it'll be able to simulate sentience. Where do we draw the line between imitation and actualization?

Deep Blue doesn't 'create' it simply finds by rote. It endlessly checks every possible combination and occasionally stumbles upon something good. It's interesting when two computers play each other, gotta go google that

Edit: Here's one: http://wwwcs.uni-paderborn.de/~IPCCC//
They use lots of big words! lol! I have no idea what "heuristics" means!

 

[warpus]

To be clear, someday there will be a computer so fast and a program so advanced it'll be able to simulate sentience. Where do we draw the line between imitation and actualization?

The line is blurry, at best. At the point where a machine is able to 'simulate' sentience perfectly, it becomes sentient.

Some would say that all we're doing is simulating sentience.

 

[MxxPwr]

I don't mean to nit-pick, but.. we are animals

Yes, of course, you're right. But yet, there's a 'you know' that makes us very different.

 

[atreas]

I love this thread - but I constantly feel I am having many "unknown words". The latest of these is the new term "brute force". Could you please explain it to me, because I can't get your point.

If you were just meaning that something has the ability to calculate in more depth and with more correctness than us men, I would understand your claims - but still, in my times, noone ever thought to say to his chess opponent "you are just using brute force to defeat me"; instead we used to say "congratulations, you calculated much better than me". So I have a feeling that you mean this "brute force" stands opposite to some higher qualities, like imagination, creativeness, etc.

Unless you are talking about an algorithm that uses brute force to solve explicitly a tree to the end in all directions. Could you explain to me what exactly do you mean by that uncomprehensible phrase?

 

[Zombie69]

No offense, but I'd rather trust wikipedia than you.

You're totally wrong about Deep Blue not using a brute force approach. It does!

This goes back to what I was talking about before - anybody can make a wild claim without backing it up. "Deep Blue doesn't use brute force!". But unless you can back this statement up you're not adding anything of significance to the discussion. If you could find some hard data showing that Deep Blue does not use a brute force algorithm as the basis for its chess-playing mastery, then this conversation would turn into something 10x times as interesting! But until you can do that, nobody's going to take what you say on your faith alone. (Unless they believe the exact same thing, of course)

Surely, the team that created Deep Blue know more about it than some guy who happened to post on wikipedia.

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.html

Here are some quotes from that site :

Secondly, Deep Blue's "chess knowledge" has improved since last year. Working with international grandmaster Joel Benjamin, the development team has spent the past several months educating Deep Blue about some of the finer points of the game.

It has more chess information to work with than most computers and all but a few chess masters.

Instead, it operates much like a turbocharged "expert system," drawing on vast resources of stored information (For example, a database of opening games played by grandmasters over the last 100 years) and then calculating the most appropriate response to an opponent's move.

Deep Blue applies brute force aplenty, but the "intelligence" is the old-fashioned kind. Think about the 100 years of grandmaster games. Kasparov isn't playing a computer, he's playing the ghosts of grandmasters past. That Deep Blue can organize such a storehouse of knowledge -- and apply it on the fly to the ever-changing complexities on the chessboard -- is what makes this particular heap of silicon an arrow pointing to the future.

One interesting aspect of Deep Blue that could be said to have psychological residue is its program for using the clock. Given a total of 3.5 hours to make all its moves, it can ration time in a variety of ways. It can average the number of moves and attempt to deviate from that only by a small margin. Or it can move very fast, forcing Kasparov to respond. Or it can take an inordinate amount of time over one move, calculating many trillions of possible games, forcing Kasparov to wait and possibly become bored or agitated.

It's a given that Deep Blue has in its memory the moves that Kasparov played in the many past games, including last year's match. Further, it has the ability to evaluate these games the same way a human player would, looking for roads not taken and possible mistakes.

 

[Zombie69]

Yes, of course, you're right. But yet, there's a 'you know' that makes us very different.

I don't personally think we're anymore special than other animals, or even plants or bacteria for that matter. Maybe you do, but then again you believe in souls...

 

[Zombie69]

Unless you are talking about an algorithm that uses brute force to solve explicitly a tree to the end in all directions. Could you explain to me what exactly do you mean by that uncomprehensible phrase?

Brute force in programming means exactly what you just said. As opposed to having a superior heuristic allowing one to search only some branches and ignore inferior branches. Or better yet, to work without any tree in the first place!

 

[atreas]

Brute force in programming means exactly what you just said. As opposed to having a superior heuristic allowing one to search only some branches and ignore inferior branches. Or better yet, to work without any tree in the first place!

I understood what you meant Zombie - I was just hoping to also hear what the other side of the opposition had in mind when supporting the "brute force" of Deep Blue. Because in this aspect it is self evident that Deep Blue wasn't using such a brute force; otherwise, they wouldn't need some chess grandmasters to TRAIN a computer how to calculate a tree to the end.

 

[MxxPwr]

I don't personally think we're anymore special than other animals, or even plants or bacteria for that matter.

Fair enough.

Sometimes I wonder why we (and I mean everybody; not just you or me) are even pondering about programming a computer to think like a human.

Maybe we should be programming a computer to problem solve like a spider, insect, or heck even other mammals; seriously. It would be a lot more practical. Maybe it would even a better opponent, since humans do get bogged down in psychological hangups that other intelligences don't have.

 

[NapoléonPremier]

Wrong. Actually, because of Einstein, we now know that even at slow speeds and macroscopic levels, Newton's equations only provide an approximation. Still, because Einstein's principles only have very small efeects on those levels, the approximation is extremely close to reality. Still, it's only an approximation.

Granted

Since i have a degree in biology, i think it fair to consider myself as a "professional scientist", if there were such a thing (scientist is not a profession).

Well, nowadays science is so extremely specialized that a 'degree in biology' (why didn't you become a rock star, dude ?) doesn't warrant you any competence at all in quantum physics (which is obviously the case ). I mean, even a degree in another field of physics doesn't warrant competence in quantum physics. In a previous post, warpus confirmed that in his view too 99% of quantum scientists hold that quantum systems are truly undeterministic. So sorry, torturing rats won't be enough to prove your point

 

[NapoléonPremier]

If you have an argument - you better be able back it up with SOMETHING. "It's true because I believe it to be true" is just not good enough in a discussion such as this.

I personnally agree that, to my knowlege, there is no "scientific" evidence that can back the existence of "souls" (whatever that means). However, my point is that if you, as an individual, want to know if you really are a spiritual being and not just a bunch of carbon cells excited by electrical currents, this is something which can be achieved without too much difficulty, as long as you're motivated. With pretty good certainty. But not to "prove" it to the others. For yourself. Which is all that really matters in the end.

 

[NapoléonPremier]

(...)is a valid argument. It gets us nowhere! You can't debunk it or prove it right.

Karl Popper's refutability principle.

Sure, the behaviour of a large number of electrons isn't random - it can be predicted with a probability wave. However, the behaviour of 1 individual electron is nondeterministic. I hope we can agree to that.

Zombie69's point about rolling dice illustrates my point beautifully.

And what is even more beautiful is that Zombie "gave" you this argument, while he himself doesn't believe that "the behaviour of 1 individual electron is nondeterministic"...

 

[NapoléonPremier]

Heh, heh. You mean all my letters on 'Ether Exists' published in the Penthouse Forums wouldn't look good on my resume?

It depends. I guess they can help you get a job at Penthouse...

I wonder if you can add to your resume the posts you make on this forum. AI, quantum physics, free will, logic, metaphysics, come on, that has to count for something...

 

[NapoléonPremier]

We can all start screaming "I believe this!" and "I believe that!" without backing anything up at all... but where does that get us? Nowhere.

Alright, it's late, I'm going home.

Do you have any evidence to back it up ?

 

[NapoléonPremier]

And my theory on DNA doesn't cut it?
I posit that DNA is fine for tons of physical information, (eye colour, number of teeth) but that "self-awareness" falls into the non-physical as well as the physical.

Like you said, you just "posit". It's a postulate, and adding DNA doesn't bring anything to the debate. Sure, if there is something "else" required to make a human being, DNA ain't enough. And if there isn't, then DNA is enough. Right back where we started.

 

[NapoléonPremier]

NapoléonPremier, i agree with Lord Olleus that you're a crackpot and should be interned.

Yeah yeah, come on with me we'll check in together, we'll get fancy pajamas, free drugs, and we'll get to play checkers all day while watching "Jeopardy". It'll be fun. Plus we can say all day long that I'm Napoleon and that you are a Zombie, and nobody will mind !


Btw, did you know that the zombie, the one brought back from the dead in an unholy fashion, is a word (and probably a concept too) of the voodoo "religion" ? I guess they'll definitely have to book you a room next to mine at the nuthouse...

 

[NapoléonPremier]

As for buddism and hinduism, well there are also about 6 billion people who believe in some form of god, and that doesn't make the concept any less ridiculous.

I completely agree that the number of people believing something proves nothing. However, India is not some primitive tribe from the Pacific believing in some "Great Frog God". Today, India is a very advanced nation, counting some of the best mathematicians and computer programmers in the world. Yet they've been holding the same beliefs for more than 5000 years, far longer than christianity. And a lot of Westerners, starting from the 19th century and before, who have studied these beliefs have been strongly shaken by them. And these beliefs are not just some "do's" and "don'ts" like what christianity has mostly become. They're a very complex and very subtle metaphysical view of life, man and the universe.
So you can just say "f*** it, it's just superstitious crap" and dismiss it altogether. Or you can start studying it with an open mind to see if there are not some elements of truth and insight in it. And I guarantee you won't regret the trip (which doesn't mean you'll have to shave your head and walk around in the streets chanting "hare hare Krishna" ).

 

[NapoléonPremier]

I don't think you're crazy NapoléonPremier, despite what our resident psyciatrists would say. Seems they would be locking up most of mankind.
Personally, I don't want my tax dollars going towards placing perfectly reasonable people in the nut house for holding beliefs that cannot be proven scientifically.

Don't worry, I'm French, so the French taxpayers' euros would pay for it... Which is ok, cause we don't really mind wasting their money.
As an aside, you Americans have the right phrasing for it : "taxpayers' money". We say : "the government will pay for it", like it was some sort of favor, when what it really means is : "YOU will pay for it, sucker !"

I do like your humor though, so keep up the good work.

Thanks, that's nice !
Well, when you have to start taking sides, you know business is getting serious... I wonder if I can get Ceasar and Monty on my team (although they'd probably backstab me anyway...)

 

[NapoléonPremier]

In June 1997, Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful supercomputer, although this did not take into account Deep Blue's special-purpose hardware for chess.

That's interesting. Does this mean that if you took the most powerful supercomputer (probably owned by the US military or NSA or something like that "defending our freedom" ) and rigged it specially for chess, you could get something that wipes out anything existing today chess-wise, human or machine ?

 

[NapoléonPremier]

Maybe the game AI's would begin to have discussions about whether it would be possible to make us smarter or not.

Yeah, maybe they would if they'd stop for a minute discussing how they can con us, backstab us, and try taking everything we've got...