Well, I’m certainly no super-stellar GIB-caliber programmer, but I do have a background in the field. And I will say that, despite his professed ignorance, I do think 1eyedjack does have some good (albeit sometimes amusing) insights. 1) First I will say that, although I have a deep understanding of some Computer Science principles, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not one of them. (GIB is a form of AI). I’ve deliberately avoided that field because, frankly, I think it’s too hard. 2) I’ve noticed that much light has been made of what I will call “end-user considerations,” such as resources, solution timeliness, etc. These considerations are certainly worthy, but please consider that GIB is, at heart, a research product, not a commercial application. Thus, the team’s ultimate goal is to gain insight into the problem(s) they are researching. Yes, they sell it commercially, and yes, I’m sure the end-user is considered heavily to a certain extent. But I also imagine that, if it came down to gaining insight or pleasing the end-user, the team would opt with the former. That might lead to developing a solution that isn’t (shall we say) “commercially feasible.” But then they probably just wouldn’t include the feature in commercial product. 3) Now, some might suggest that, if it can’t be made “commercially feasible”, then 1eyedjack’s solution isn’t worth pursuing. But I’m not so sure. I think his suggestion goes to inner workings of GIB. Perhaps, then, implementing 1eyedjack’s suggestion could lead to fundamental insights about GIB. Such insights may well benefit all of us (even we don’t get the elaborate DD analysis that 1eyedjack is looking for). 4) I imagine that Barmar is correct is suggesting that GIB starts its calculation anew each time a new card is played. Now, 1eyedjack suggests that this inefficient. That made me laugh, because I’d bet that the research team would agree! Trust me: if GIB doesn’t use prior work in its current analysis, it isn’t for lack of desire. Rather, the team probably just simply doesn’t know how to do it. And I’d bet this is a HUGE area/part of their research. This is why I see value if 1eyedjack’s suggestion, even if the value is only theoretical. 5) In fact, I think 1eyedjack’s suggestion really motivates a (much) larger question. It seems to me that the real problem here is that GIB currently is always focusing on the current play. In other words, if GIBs fundamental problem were summarized into one question, I’d bet the question would be “What card should the current player play next?”. This would, after all, explain (both of) the limitations that 1eyedjack points out. But now let’s say we changed the question to “Which card should ALL of the players play next?”. In other words, what happens if we change the problem so that GIB is trying to figure out which card all of the players should play next, but all at the same time (instead of one player after another). Can this problem be solved? Would it be an improvement over the current strategy? Would it support the feature(s) that 1eyedjack is looking for, and avoid the drawbacks that others have duly pointed out? Is the research team already trying to solve this problem? Would they even be interested? These are the questions that I think really make this discussion interesting. "Ignorance" and disagreements aside, I think this is a very valuable discussion. I hope that we will keep it going.
