pdf23ds comments on Expected Creative Surprises - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 October 2008 10:22PM

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Comment author: pdf23ds 26 October 2008 05:31:42PM 0 points [-]

A bit more on chess engines: many engines have a number of parameters you can set that determines their playing style, and some might say their "strategy". Things like aggressiveness, willingness to sacrifice, valuation of pieces, willingness to trade, etc. What many of these parameters actually do is change the static board evaluation function. A chess engine looks ahead many moves, and due to time constraints, picks a board position after X moves and runs the static evaluation function, which is a very naive estimate of the quality of the engine's position. A human's static evaluation function is much higher quality, but humans only look ahead a few moves at most. (Well, grandmasters look ahead a dozen or two moves at most but they're still evaluating many, many fewer positions (their pruning factor is higher).)