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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: What's this thing we call AI?
Message-ID: <GJst4F.85H@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 08:33:51 GMT
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Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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emshort@mindspring.com <emshort@mindspring.com> wrote:
>We have also seen it suggested that something is AI when it is able to
>produce results unanticipated by the programmer.
[snip]
>And here enters the mystical spark of seeming intelligence that
>distinguishes a system we would like to refer to as AI from a
>masterfully abstract simulationist world model.  The latter type of
>system is intended to make the world behave consistently according to
>the predictable physical laws with which we are familiar, so that
>paper burns, fires spread, a lack of oxygen suffocates a fire; the
>human player knows in advance what *should* happen, and the question
>is whether the system possesses the sophistication to bear out that
>expectation.

While I basically agree with this entire post, I thought I
would point out that even a pure simulationist system can
result in "emergent complexity", where combination of rules
produce unexpected results.  For example, the rules of chess are
incredibly simple compared to the "emergent" rules; the
rules of chess are about moving and capturing; there is
no notion of "defending" or protecting, nor of value for
the pieces; these emerge from the near-optimal strategy
for playing the game.

Or to use another example, I mentioned in my blue-sky
post that in IF and commercial games, the moment-to-moment
is interactive and player-ordered, but the large scale
tends to be a story. One of my ex-coworkers was fond
of telling a story about an experience one player of
Ultima Underworld had, where the player got in a fight
with a goblin and then ran, found a door, got on the
other side of the door (and perhaps spiked it shut),
only to, moments later, discover that he had locked
himself into a room with a skeleton warrior, a rather
tough opponent at that stage of the game--and that
moment, that experience, had never been planned by
the designers. And yet this was all programmatic
simulationist logic. (Most players didn't have anywhere
as neat as an experience, since there was no
'gamemaster AI' driving it; this was just chance.)

Whether you accept this as an emergeent, player-driven
small-scale "story" or not is a separate quesiton.

Sean
