>A chess engine can be dropped into a board position it has never encounterd and search over possible continuations, evaluating and selecting actions based on the state it finds itself in.
Sounds pretty similar to a calculator with a numerical root-finding algorithm, if you only substitute board position it has never encounterd with a polynomial it has never encountered.
>The core of being intelligent is being able to make decisions independently
What does it mean for a deterministic algorithm to make decisions?
>Sounds pretty similar to a calculator with a numerical root-finding algorithm, if you only substitute board position it has never encounterd with a polynomial it has never encountered.
>What does it mean for a deterministic algorithm to make decisions?
Newton-Raphson isn't choosing among possible actions. Given (x_n), its next step is mechanically specified by the update rule: compute the derivative, take the tangent intercept, repeat. The intermediate result changes the next input, but that's not by-itself decision making.
A chess engine, again, does something different. From a position, there are many legal actions it could take. It considers alternatives, estimates their consequences according to some objective, and selects one. The engine has to work out which available move best advances its objective.
You can make both algorithms determinstic, but determinism isn't the distinction i'm drawing. 'Decision' here doesn't mean some metaphysical excercise of free will. It's more about selecting an action from alternatives based on an evaluation of their expected consequences. Determinism is orthogonal to decision making. Deterministic doesn't mean predictable, nor does it make its choices any less it own computation.
What about Minimax algorithm playing Tic-Tac-Toe? Is it inteligent? Is it inteligent we if we reduce the search depth so the right decision is not obvious?
A tic-tac-toe minimax algorithm makes choices but with exhaustive search so it really doesn't have to form a judgement about an unresolved situation or decide what is likely to work. Not much of a decision if you're not exercising any judgememt.
Exhaustive search is impossible in chess, so again, chess engines do something different. A chess engine has to stop well before terminal positions and make judgements about positions it cannot fully resolve.
Reducing the search depth would make it more interesting because it too has to evaluate unresolved positions. But then the interesting part becomes the evaluation function is. For tic tac toe, it's going to be very easy to be written in such a manner where most of the judgement is supplied by the designer and not the system.
> What does it mean for a deterministic algorithm to make decisions?
That aspect at least is not an issue, because: what does it mean to say that a dice roll is a "decision"? That's just probability, and it's as mindless as determinism. Some people associate free will with randomness, for no reason other than that it's an escape from the constraint of determinism, but it isn't any more meaningful. Yet just because meaningful thought is pre-determined by physics doesn't stop it from being thought, and hence being a decision.
Sounds pretty similar to a calculator with a numerical root-finding algorithm, if you only substitute board position it has never encounterd with a polynomial it has never encountered.
>The core of being intelligent is being able to make decisions independently
What does it mean for a deterministic algorithm to make decisions?