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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> The game of real intelligence !!??!!
        
(Message started by: chessandgo on May 11^th, 2006, 6:44pm)

Title: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by chessandgo on May 11^th, 2006, 6:44pm

Hi,

Each time I go on this website, i've got an uneasy feeling at the very entrance. "Arimaa, the game of [i]real[\i] intelligence" it says. Besides from looking really pretentious, it seems to me that the following explanation suggests that chess is a game about fake intelligence.
Am I the only one to dilslike this sentence ?
Moreover, as Arimaa seems now quite well established with more and more players and some years of practice, maybe the introduction page should be about the game itself rather than on chess programs ?

This is just a suggestion ...

Jean

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Fritzlein on May 11^th, 2006, 9:06pm

Yes, I've read on a few blogs that some other people were a bit turned off by the slogan, "The game of real intelligence". Some of the comments are from people who admire Go, and object to Arimaa claiming to be the game of real intelligence.

My problem with the slogan is the use of the word real. "Real" doesn't make sense unless you know what is "fake". I'm perfectly aware that real intelligence in this context is supposed to contrast with the fake intelligence of chess computers, not the fake intelligence of human chess players, but the slogan by itself is ripe for misinterpreation. (My high school English teacher warned me against using "real" or "really", because it intensifies without clarifying.)

Anyway games don't have intelligence, game-players do, so talking about a game of intelligence is problematic. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov there was a great commotion over whether Deep Blue should be deemed intelligent or not. You can tell which side of the debate Omar was on. He wants to make a point that Deep Blue wasn't intelligent. It's a corollary that chess is a game which can be played well without intelligence, not that chess is a game of fake intelligence, and not that human chess players don't use intelligence.

Marketing is a tough job. Imagine the slogan, "Arimaa, the game for which brute force computation is inadequate to play well." Who would get excited about that?

In another thread http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1118516099 I had my try at a better tagline: "Computers can't handle it. Can you?" I think it gets to the point of the game design, and maybe could draw someone in, but it doesn't insult any other games, and it doesn't use the ill-defined word "real".

At some point I think Arimaa could grow beyond its origins. If we play for twenty years and don't find the end of the strategy, then who cares about computers? People will play it for fun just like they play other games for fun regardless of computers. For now, however, I think any slogan should have some indirect reference to the Arimaa Challenge. Do you agree? Can you suggest a good slogan of your own?

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Fritzlein on May 11^th, 2006, 9:10pm

Ooh, ooh, I just thought of a slogan!

Arimaa: Brains required.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Swynndla on May 11^th, 2006, 10:08pm

on 05/11/06 at 21:10:15, Fritzlein wrote:

Arimaa: Brains required.

Hmmmm ... that would give me the impression that dittsy people like me wouldn't be welcome among the brainy group of arimaans.

I like your slogan of: "Computers can't handle it. Can you?"

I think that something like this would be good also: "arimaa - the game computers are afraid of" ;)

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by 99of9 on May 12^th, 2006, 2:47am

arimaa scares computers bitless

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by aaaa on May 12^th, 2006, 3:09am

I agree that one should not introduce Arimaa by bashing computer chess. If a human-defeating Arimaa bot arises, but can't do anything else for that matter, then it's no more intelligent than the equivalent chess computer. It's only the hope that the technique(s) used may turn out to be useful in a more general context.

It's odd how the first thing one is confronted with when finding out about a new strategy game is a picture of Kasparov and a reminiscence of his 1997 match with Deep Blue. It's better to not mention chess at all in the beginning except for pointing out the advantage that playing Arimaa can be done with an existing chess set and perhaps using something similar for the slogan.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Arimanator on May 12^th, 2006, 3:47am

I am not very big on slogans. A French public figure once said (I don't remember who) that "When the thinking is weak it often hides behind a slogan". I tend to go along with that. Slogans are nice to shout in manifestations or to sell soap or cars but for great ideas like Arimaa, not so much. I think that now Arimaa has won a name for itself and that it could shed its parentage to Chess at least on the front page of the Arimaa site. Present Arimaa like a standalone concept that owes little if any to other games like Chess or Go which is the absolute truth. I mean the rules of Arimaa have little to do with Chess' or Go's, haven't they?

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by chessandgo on May 12^th, 2006, 4:51pm

agreed. I also like Fritzlein's "computers cant' handle it. Can you ?", as well as Nathan's one. :)

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by unic on May 12^th, 2006, 5:35pm

I must say that personally, I dislike the focus on Arimaa being hard for computers - there are plenty of abstracts out there that are as hard or even harder.

Instead, I'd like to see Arimaa being promoted on its merits as being a good game - which it is (and which not all games difficult for computers are).

'Real' intelligence is a silly phrase - even if computers one day can beat humans at Arimaa, I doubt we would claim that they had real intelligence.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Fritzlein on May 12^th, 2006, 7:44pm

on 05/12/06 at 03:09:58, aaaa wrote:

It's only the hope that the technique(s) used may turn out to be useful in a more general context.

Very good point. I give about a 50% chance that some computer will win the Arimaa Challenge by 2020. If computers win, I give about a 50% chance that so-called AI will not have been necessary for that victory, i.e. that people like Omar will turn around and say that the champion computer just used brute force and a clever algorithm, but didn't display intelligence.

I personally don't see why learning is necessary for a computer to do well, although the results of the learning backgammon programs are impressive.

As for promoting Arimaa on its pure merits as a game, truth is on our side. Definitely I've seen blog comments of the form, "So what if you can beat your computer at it? Is Arimaa any fun?" I wanted to tell those skeptics what a great game they were missing.

On the other hand, there are many fun strategy games which languish in obscurity because most folks prefer video games. Too many abstract strategy games are vying for mindshare among too few people. Unic pointed out the problem in another thread when he said that there are better games out there than Arimaa, but not so many opponents available for those other games.

Omar's cash backing for the Arimaa Challenge has been a great promotion tool, and I don't think it should be lightly set aside. A slogan just gets people in the door. Once they're here, they can find out for themselves what a blast Arimaa is as a human vs. human contest.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by leo on May 12^th, 2006, 8:56pm

on 05/12/06 at 19:44:01, Fritzlein wrote:

I personally don't see why learning is necessary for a computer to do well, although the results of the learning backgammon programs are impressive.

Considering our poor attempts at understanding our own mind, computer learning might be the only way to discover how humans think - although analysing a self evolved artificial neural network can be tough psychology as well :)

About the front page and slogans: I think Arimaa can interest people for very different reasons, so there can't be a unique manner to present the game. I for one am not fond of board games, although I must say that Arimaa is much more fun than any other board game I know. What attracted me was Omar's belief that we should jump a level up in how we make AI. I thought: Here's a greenhouse for developing new techniques before running in open field. The challenge for me isn't so much making a bot that beats humans as making a bot that beats conventional bots.

It would be good that more people gave their opinion on the game and the site so as to tune its pages for the better.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by omar on May 13^th, 2006, 3:52am

I've often seen chess refered to as:
Chess the game of Kings

Since Kings are the most valuable pieces in Chess and elephants are the most valuable pieces in Arimaa it naturally follows that the slogan for Arimaa should be:
Arimaa the game of Elephants

:-)

But seriously let me try to explain how the current slogan came about. I wanted some words to finish off the phrase "Arimaa the game of ..." something. That way it would be similar to the phrase used with Chess. After all Arimaa has it's roots in Chess. If Chess hadn't existed Arimaa wouldn't exist. I also wanted the phrase to reflect that this game was going to be used as a bench mark to test for human like intelligence and that it was going to challenge the artificial intelligence community. It is in fact a simple and objective Touring test. So finishing it off with "real intelligence" as a pun on "artificial intelligence" seemed like a natural fit. So I came up with:
Arimaa the game of real intelligence

Now if people look at that in different ways it could have unintended meanings. I certianly don't mean to belittle chess, but it is true that Arimaa's beginings stem from computers defeating humans at chess. So I needed to mention that on the main page.

Arimaa is certianly not the first game to give computers a challenge. But it is definitely the first game designed for that purpose. Also among the games that are difficult for computers Arimaa is perhaps the simplest in that it uses the least amount of material. So for these reasons it deserves to claim such a slogan.

But having said all that I still agree that the current slogan is not good for PR and that the focus of the main page needs to change as the game matures. I am open to suggestions on a new slogan and content for the main page.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Fritzlein on May 13^th, 2006, 9:29am

on 05/13/06 at 03:52:17, omar wrote:

Arimaa is certianly not the first game to give computers a challenge. But it is definitely the first game designed for that purpose.

Except for OCTI?

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by chessandgo on May 13^th, 2006, 2:52pm

on 05/13/06 at 03:52:17, omar wrote:

After all Arimaa has it's roots in Chess. If Chess hadn't existed Arimaa wouldn't exist.

Sure Omar ; at the very beginning your introduction page was accurate, no pb ; my question was rather at which point would it be better to dissociate the game from it's roots ...

Anyway that's not a crucial issue ;)

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Swynndla on May 13^th, 2006, 4:08pm

I've been asking new people where they found out about arimaa ... I haven't asked a lot, but my subjective feeling is the biggest group "found the wikipedia article while browsing pages about chess", and 2nd biggest "found the wikipedia article while browsing about AI", and 3rd "my friend told me about it".

Chess seems (to me) to be a good hook for arimaa.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by chessandgo on May 13^th, 2006, 4:22pm

indeed Nathan ... true for me also ;)

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by IdahoEv on May 19^th, 2006, 4:32pm

One thought in similar vein that keeps nagging at me. The front page and related material describe how Deep Blue et. al. can crush humans at chess merely by throwing CPU cycles at the problem, and Arimaa is a different sort of challenge for computers.

But then the rules for the challenge state <i>"The program must be able to run on a general-purpose, off-the-shelf computer and not require any specialized hardware"</i>.

Well, okay, but chess programs running on a general-purpose commodity CPU can't beat grandmasters either, so this feels like a false dichotomy. If we ran an optimized Bomb on Hydra-like cluster, could it beat fritzlein?

I know there's a reasoned answer to that question based on the branch factor, but on the surface it reads like the Arimaa challenge artificially makes Arimaa harder than chess by limiting the hardware.

There's no easy solution to that, but it has always rankled me from a fairness perspective.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by chessandgo on May 19^th, 2006, 4:53pm

Well even on basic hardware chess programs have grandmaster level, even if not top players' level.
And Bomb is not that bad ... I wonder how many players can play it and win for sure ... not myself anyway ...

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Fritzlein on May 20^th, 2006, 1:03pm

on 05/19/06 at 16:32:01, IdahoEv wrote:

If we ran an optimized Bomb on Hydra-like cluster, could it beat fritzlein?

I know there's a reasoned answer to that question based on the branch factor [...]

I'm not sure what the "reasoned answer" would be, even though Janzert has enlightened us about the branching factor. I don't think we have a very clear idea what increase in strength to expect from from an extra ply of search depth.

Did you read this old thread?
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1124835841
If a bot really improves 68 points per doubling of speed, then ten doublings would be plenty to put Bomb ahead of me. There are computers one thousand (=2^10) times as fast as the hardware Bomb ran on this year, aren't there?

So maybe the restriction is simple: Omar expects he would lose to fast hardware, and then the AI-promoting purpose of Arimaa would be lost. Which reminds me to remind everyone that the 8-0 score in favor of Omar the first year masks Bomb2004's serious winning chances. The bots got close to winning even before Arimaa got off the ground, so I don't blame Omar if he's a little scared.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by aaaa on Mar 28^th, 2007, 2:20pm

You can still see the ill-fated slogan as a page title if you go to http://arimaa.com or http://www.arimaa.com, but now it's so short that it may possibly classify as a subliminal message instead.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by omar on Mar 28^th, 2007, 5:30pm

on 03/28/07 at 14:20:51, aaaa wrote:

You can still see the ill-fated slogan as a page title if you go to http://arimaa.com or http://www.arimaa.com, but now it's so short that it may possibly classify as a subliminal message instead.

I'll probably leave that there as a subliminal message :-)

There's also an easter egg on that page :-)

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by seanick on Mar 29^th, 2007, 1:27am

does the embryo of a religious holiday involve something about (a majority, yet under 100%)?
if so, I don't know what it is.

and for the record, I like this easter egg better: http://www.eeggs.com/items/39833.html

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by JacquesB on Mar 29^th, 2007, 12:11pm

One egg is: http://arimaa.com/MvM.jpg

And there is also a text:

"<!--

Computers.

We created them to do our calculations.
We programmed them with . . . "

(Find the rest as homework. ;-)

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by Yogui on Apr 24^th, 2007, 12:31am

on 05/13/06 at 16:08:34, Swynndla wrote:

I found out about Aarima precisely while browsing about AI and what caught my attention initially was the fact that it had been designed to be difficult for computers to play. But after playing several games I found it to be quite fun and interesting in itself.

By the way, It would be interesting to start a thread asking people how they found out about Aarima.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by obiwan on May 1^st, 2007, 12:04am

on 04/24/07 at 00:31:00, Yogui wrote:

I found Arimaa by browsing wikipedia chess. The whole "brute force does not work" aspect got me curious. Shifting away from tactics and into strategy in an effort to beat Bomb is what hooked me.

I am embarrassed to admit it but Fritzlein's "crappy" slogan of "brute force does not work" probably would have worked on me. :P

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by RonWeasley on May 1^st, 2007, 6:47am

I read about the game in Games Magazine. I liked the part about playing for free.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by arimaa_master on May 1^st, 2007, 3:06pm

I read about arimaa at www.talkchess.com while browsing the chess news. Since then I am totally addicted :D.

Title: Re: The game of real intelligence !!??!!
Post by nbarriga on May 1^st, 2007, 8:25pm

I don't remember where exactly, but I remember I was reading about the Kasparov's defeat against Deep Blue.