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From: Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Meanings Of AI Koans
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2024 09:35:01 +0100
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On 2024-04-21, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

>
>     In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as
>     he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
>
>     “What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.
>
>     “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe”
>     Sussman replied.
>
>     “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.
>
>     “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”,
>     Sussman said.
>
>     Minsky then shut his eyes.
>
>     “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
>
>     “So that the room will be empty.”
>
>     At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
>
> Commentary:
>
> I wonder if either of them had heard of genetic algorithms?


The same would still apply, wouldn't it? If I'm interpreting the example
correctly, the matter here is mistaking randomness for lack of bias or
influence. It still exists, but is made less "visible" by the
randomness.

-- 
Nuno Silva