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»» forums  »» artificial intelligence forum subject: Sportsmanship 8 replies on 1 page. most recent reply: 20-Oct-02 14:39 by pdcs

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warptera »» models »» homepage Sportsmanship   posted: 17-Oct-02 23:13   »»  How are we to be sure that the same problems that have plagued Man vs. Machine Chess matches, won't affect the soda races? Gary Kasparov (sp?) accused the engineers behind deep blue of altering their program specifically to play him, thereby complimenting the machine's power with their own human stategy. What if people write algorithms that are specifically geared toward producing, say, the fasted amoeba, rather than the fastest model in general. Shouldn't the G.A.s have to build a model from "scratch" rather than become a tuning mechanism for an established (by humans) model genre? -w

Lectvay »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 17-Oct-02 23:21   »»  I think the problem is that there would be no way to enforce this at all. At least, I cannot think of any way. In my opinion, the best competitors in sodarace will be talented and creative human constructors who have the programming know-how to write effective AIs that can optimize their basic ideas. How could that possibly be beaten? Since sodaconstructor models will be able to be viewed and edited in XML format, there's not really any way to tell if a program has built a model or if a human did, or some combination of the two. Is there?

warptera »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 18-Oct-02 03:01   »»  I think G.A.s should be forced to start from scratch if it is practical. Other wise they are nothing but sophisticated tools to compliment human constructing. I assume this project is open-source. I imagine it wouldn't be difficult for another programmer to see if the code uses an amoeba starting point rather than a blank slate (or for CD: tabula rasa). -w

pdcs »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 18-Oct-02 12:24   »»  These are interesting issues raised, and somthing that i feel is best thrashed out in the forum while the races are running. Part of the purpose of sodarace is to get people thinking about what is 'Intelligence' artificial or otherwise, and this will make it all very concrete. It can be argued that human creativity does not arise in a void, that we build on others previous ideas and that the 'tuning' are part of the human process... discuss :)

warptera »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 18-Oct-02 13:34   »»  i agree with you about human intelligence. my point is that a genetic algorithm should not have the benefit of human experience when it is making models (though, obviously it was created with the help of human experience). the process of evolution is not guided by an intelligent form-perfecting mechanism, rather it is a process guided by the relative fitness of its progeny according to the boundries of their existence. for the programmer to "lean" to code towards a certain existing genre (read: "amoeba"), or to use this process to tune existing models rather than build from scratch is inconsistent with the spirit of this endeavor. -w

pdcs »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 18-Oct-02 23:12   »»  The issue you raise is important, and also applies to the human build racer creations. For example if someone (as has happend) takes someone elses racer as a 'model' and modifies it a bit... is that allowed? These are the sorts of rule issues and ethics that are probably best decided by the community of users.. perhaps we are less impressed by a remodelled 'clone', but should we (or could we?) outlaw them and pevent their use?

warptera »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 19-Oct-02 00:56   »»  >For example if someone (as has happend) >takes someone elses racer as a 'model' and >modifies it a bit... is that allowed? As a Model builder I consider that Cross-Pollination and would not only allow it but encourage it. Besides, the solution is a social one (as ed is so fond of saying) rather than programatic or legistlative one. If someone poaches a model, we'll let him or her have it. such people are never accepted in our ranks and never stick around long. -w

ndabritti »» models Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 20-Oct-02 05:16   »»  Well, even though I'm not much of a programmer (certainly not good enough of one to submit an entry into this contest), this does seem to be something of an important issue. First of all, if a genetic algorithm of some sort is used to evolve to model, obivously there would probably be no issue. But, what about other solution-generating programs? If a more rigid artificial intelligence program was used, there would (? might?) have to be some starting point and some rules that guide the contruction of solution. How rigid could the rules and how finished could the seed be and still be considered an autonomous solution generator? I hope that posting doesn't seem too naive or redudant in light of the rest. Also, it seems that you have only considered G.A.'s... you are not considering other algorithms to generate solutions?

pdcs »» models »» homepage Re: Sportsmanship   posted: 20-Oct-02 14:39   »»  Thanks for your comments, we certainly wont expect the AI to be limited to genetic Algorithms. The type of approach you mention goes by the name of an expert system, where the 'rules' used by a human 'expert' (a good constructor) are formalised in a computer program which will allow it to produce racers- it will be interesting to see how the solutions produced by this kind of AI approach differs from the genetic algorithm approach, and again the issue remains- when is the AI really 'intelligent' and not just a trivial modification of previous human work.. this in part is what the AI vs Humans part of sodarace is trying to get people to think about

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