Re: Turing test

[Jean-loup Gailly <jloup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[I sent this reply privately to Martin to avoid influencing other
answers, but other people sent their replies to the list so here is mine.]

Thanks for the puzzle. It's a difficult test because both players
are very weak, they both make big blunders.

I think that the program is black for the following reasons:

- The first 2 white moves are quite unusual and programs don't play
  like this, unless you forced the program to play in this way to fool us.

- The move F6 displays a relatively long term strategy of attacking
  the bottom black group, at the cost of giving up many points. Programs
  are usually short-sighted.

- Black is weak at life and death. Black G5 makes a dead shape.
  White is weak too because (s)he fails twice to kill (after black D1
  and after black G4). But when the problem becomes simpler, black
  finally manages to solve it and saves the group with F1.

- White makes a very bad yose, which is typical of human beginners.
  Programs are better than human beginners in the yose. For example
  white captures at q19 instead of capturing at s11 in sente.

> If you were the human playing or if you were writing the program,
> what would you do differently?

If I were the human playing, I would beat the program very easily so
the game would be totally different. If I were writing the program,
I would first try to fix the life & death analysis to make sure that it
doesn't create a dead group with move black G5 (or if the program is
white, make sure that it kills).

Jean-loup