Re: computer-go: Authenticating the identity of a remote go-playing computer program

[Don Dailey <drd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   From: Dave Dyer <ddyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

   In any case, requiring deterministic behavior is completely
   unacceptable.  If any program in tournament play behaved deterministicly,
   all you need to win every game against it is the record of some past game
   which the program lost.

Being deterministic  doesn't mean it  has to play  the same exact move
every time.

Part of the protocol for such a tournament (which  I admit I am not in
favor  of  unless  it   was made a  lot  more   painless for  all  the
contestants)    could be that  each   program  publishes whatever ever
"state" it  chooses prior to the game.   The published state let's you
set up any parameters  in advance, such a choosing  a random seed  for
the random  number generator  and loading  learning  tables  etc.  The
program then  has  to be  deterministic with respect  to the  starting
state and the checksum of the executable.

Yet another idea to handle variability is  to send a random seed prior
to each move,  as part of  the  communication protocol.  To verifty  a
game, the  "verifier" would have to remember  all  the seeds that were
sent for each game as part of its record.   The programs would be free
to use this information any way possible.


Don