gwern comments on AI Challenge: Ants - Post Mortem - Less Wrong

11 Post author: D_Alex 12 January 2012 07:23AM

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Comment author: gwern 14 January 2012 07:29:42PM *  1 point [-]

The Ants problem -- if I'm understanding it correctly -- is a problem of coordinated action.

One of the interesting aspects of the winning entry post-mortem is the description of how dumb and how local the basic strategy the winner used:

There’s been a lot of talking about overall strategies. Unfortunately, i don’t really have one. I do not make decisions based on the number of ants i have or the size of my territory, my bot does not play different when it’s losing or winning, it does not even know that. I also never look which turn it is, in the first turn everything is done exactly the same as in the 999th turn. I treat all enemies the same, even in combat situations and i don’t save any hill locations.

Other than moving ants away from my hills via missions, every move i make depends entirely on the local environment of the ant.

Interesting reading, overall.

EDIT: Another example of overthinking it: http://lesswrong.com/lw/8ay/ai_challenge_ants/56ug One wonders if the winner could understand even half those links.

Comment author: malthrin 14 January 2012 09:13:08PM 1 point [-]

Agreed. We can certainly do better than that. Unless I have a major life-event before the next AI challenge, I'll enter and get the LW community involved in the effort.

Comment author: gwern 14 January 2012 09:22:42PM 1 point [-]

What makes you think there's much better to be done? Some games or problems just aren't very deep, like Tic-tac-toe.

Comment author: malthrin 15 January 2012 12:19:23AM 1 point [-]

The winning program ignored a lot of information, and there weren't enough entries to convince me that the information couldn't be used efficiently.

Comment author: JonathanLivengood 15 January 2012 10:27:56PM *  0 points [-]

Yes, the write-up is very interesting. But while the strategy was very local, he did end up having mechanisms for coordinating action between ants with otherwise pretty simple decision rules, especially for combat. At least, that's the way it looks to me. Did you mean for your comment to be a criticism of what I wrote? If so, could you say a bit more?

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