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VirtualHat t1_j440ajs wrote

People tend to use AI and ML to mean similar things. But yes, in academia, we still research AI ideas that are not ML. And integrating good-old-fashioned-ai (GOFAI) with more modern ML is becoming an area of increasing research interest.

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ElectronicCress3132 t1_j45f3yo wrote

> And integrating good-old-fashioned-ai > (GOFAI) with more modern ML is becoming an area of increasing research interest.

Any papers you recommend on this topic?

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gaymuslimsocialist t1_j45gwsl wrote

Any of the papers in the AlphaZero family do this: they combine tree search with learned policy and value functions.

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FallUpJV t1_j45sb9f wrote

Would you recommend any of those or is there one in particular that introduces well such techniques?

Edit : I'm asking this because I'm not very familiar with what tree search means in the first place

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cdsmith t1_j460nf2 wrote

Tree search means precisely that: searching a tree. In the context of AlphaZero, the tree is the game tree. That is:

  • I can move my pawn to e4. Then:
    • You could move your knight to c6
      • ...
    • Or you could move your pawn to e6
      • ...
    • Or ...
  • Or, I could move my pawn to d4. Then:
    • You could take my pawn with your pawn on c5.
      • ...
    • Or you could move your knight to c6.
      • ...
    • Or you could move your pawn to d5.
      • ...
    • Or ...
  • Or, I could ...

That's it. The possible moves at each game state, and the game states that they lead to, form a tree. (Actually more like a DAG, since transpositions are possible, but it's often simplified by calling it a tree.) Searching that tree up to a certain depth amounts to thinking forward that many moves in the game. The way you search the tree is some variation on minimax: that is, you want to choose the best move for yourself now, but that means at the next level down, you want to pessimistically only consider the best move for your opponent (which is the worst one for you), etc. Variations come in terms of what order you visit the various nodes of the tree. You could just do a straight-forward depth-first traversal up to a certain depth, in which case this is traditional minimax search. You can refuse to ever visit some nodes, because you know they can't possibly matter, and that's alpha-beta pruning. You could even visit nodes in a random order, changing the likelihood of visiting each node based on a constantly updated estimate of how likely it is to matter, and that's roughly what happens in monte carlo tree search. Either way, you're just traversing that tree in some order.

AlphaZero combines this with machine learning by using two empirically trained machine learning algorithms to tweak the traversal order of the tree, by identifying moves that seem likely to be good, as well as to evaluate partially completed games to estimate how good they look for each player. But ultimately, the machine learning models just plug into certain holes in the tree search algorithm.

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dr3aminc0de t1_j46y5o7 wrote

How does this translate to the other Alpha* AIs? I’m thinking of AlphaCraft (star craft) which has too many move options to model it as a tree.

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Valachio OP t1_j440r6p wrote

That's cool. Apart from integrating GOFAI with ML, what other non-ML techniques are gaining popularity recently?

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[deleted] t1_j46jso9 wrote

ML is AI, AI is not necessarily ML.

All birds are dinosaurs, not all dinosaurs are birds.

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etoipi1 t1_j49mq79 wrote

Really? Birds are descendants of dinosaurs?

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I_will_delete_myself t1_j4557ug wrote

Correct me if I am wrong AI: Niche part of ML ML: AI + Data Science

Edit: An “intelligent” computer uses AI to think like a human and perform tasks on its own. Machine learning is how a computer system develops its intelligence

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/ai/artificial-intelligence-vs-machine-learning/

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VirtualHat t1_j456msu wrote

Definitions shift a bit, and people disagree, but this is what I stick to...

AI: Any system that responds 'intelligently' to its environment. A thermostat is, therefore, AI.

ML: A system that gets better at a task with more data.

Therefore ML is a subset of AI, one specific way of achieving the goal.

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I_will_delete_myself t1_j46jn9e wrote

Ok thank you. I kind of hate the mob mentality of this site though. It discourages learning and experimenting.

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[deleted] t1_j45cnht wrote

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VirtualHat t1_j45dklv wrote

I think Russell and Norvig is a good place to start if you want to read more. The AI defintion is a taken from their textbook which is one of the most cited references I've ever seen. I do agree however that the first defintion has a problem. Namely with what 'intellegently' means.

The second defintion is just the textbook defintion of ML. Hard to argue with that one. It's taken from Tom Mitchell. Formally “A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some task T and some performance measure P, if its performance on T, as measured by P, improves with experience E.” (Machine Learning, Tom Mitchell, McGraw Hill, 1997).

I'd be curious to know what your thoughts on a good defintion for AI would be? This is an actively debated topic, and so far no one really has a great defintion (that I know of).

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tell-me-the-truth- t1_j45e4gv wrote

yeah I can see the point behind ML definition.. i guess i was trying to say you don’t always get better with more data. the performance might saturate at some point or the new data you add could be garbage.. so i found it a bit odd to tie definition of ML to the quantity of data.. the definition you linked talks about experience.. i’m not sure how it’s defined.

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VirtualHat t1_j45em2b wrote

Yes true! Most models will eventually saturate and perhaps and even become worse. I guess it's our job then to just make the algorithms better :). A great example of this is the new Large Langauge Models (LLM), which are trained on billions if not trillions of tokens, and still keep getting better :)

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MustachedLobster t1_j45dp6k wrote

A thermostat responds to the environment. It turns on the heating when it gets too cold.

and the ML definition is just repeating the formal definition by Mitchell:

> A computer program is said to learn from experience E with respect to some class of tasks T and performance measure P, if its performance at tasks in T, as measured by P, improves with experience E.”

https://towardsdatascience.com/what-is-machine-learning-and-types-of-machine-learning-andrews-machine-learning-part-1-9cd9755bc647#:~:text=Tom%20Mitchell%20provides%20a%20more,simple%20example%20to%20understand%20better%20.

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tell-me-the-truth- t1_j45eidu wrote

oh i mixed thermometer with thermostat.. yeah then i agree thermostat can be AI..

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[deleted] t1_j45dk5m wrote

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VirtualHat t1_j45e2rs wrote

Everything is new in its current form :) AI, however, goes back a long way... perhaps Turing would be a reasonable starting point, though, with him writing about COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE back in 1950.

edit: gramma.

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[deleted] t1_j45ek1n wrote

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VirtualHat t1_j45faub wrote

Genetic algorithms are a type of evolutionary algorithm, which are themselves a part of AI. Have a look at the wiki page.

I think I can see your point though. The term AI is used quite differently in research than in the popular meaning. We sometimes joke that the cultural definition of AI is "everything that can't yet be done with a computer" :)

This is a bit of a running joke in the field. Chess was AI, until we solved it, then it wasn't. Asking a computer random questions and getting an answer Star Trek style was AI until Google then it was just 'searching the internet'. The list goes on...

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deustrader t1_j46zi5j wrote

I guess I would be concerned with claiming that evolutionary algorithms are AI, because that’s not how most people understand the current AI. And right now pretty much everything is being advertised as AI for marketing purposes, without being able to distinguish one solution from another. But you’ve made a good point.

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Tart_Beginning t1_j45p120 wrote

Username checks out hehe. Jk, don’t get why people are downvoting you for being a lil wrong!

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I_will_delete_myself t1_j46jclx wrote

I was just asking more of a question tbh than pretending to know it. It’s why I said correct me if I am wrong.

IDK, I guess I ran into the Reeeeeditors. Mob mentality is what drives the website and blind dislike. I just don’t worry about it and enjoy my life outside this site.

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