computer-go: Dr. I. J. Good's thoughts on computer go in 1965

[Bob Myers <rtm@xxxxxxx>]

Perhaps some of you know of Dr. I. J. Good, the noted statistician, and
currently University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Statistics at
Virginia Polytechnic Institute.  I recently found that Dr. Good published an
article on go in 1965 in the New Scientist, Vol. 25, Pages 172-174.  The
readers of this mailing list may be interested in the prescient comments he
made in this article on the topic of computer go.

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Go on a computer? -- In order to programme a computer to play a reasonable
game of Go -- rather than merely a legal game -- it is necessary to
formalise the principles of good strategy, or to design a learning
programme.  The principles are more qualitative and mysterious than in
chess, and depend more on judgment.  So I think it will be even more
difficult to programme a computer to play a reasonable game of Go than of
chess.

The experienced player will often be unable to explain convincingly to a
beginner why one move is better than another.  A move might be regarded as
good because it looks influential, or combines attack and defence, or
preserves the initiative, or because if we had not played at that vertex the
opponent would have done so; or it might be regarded as bad because it was
too bold or too timid, or too close to the enemy or too far away.  If these
and other qualitative judgments could be expressed in precise quantitative
terms, then good strategy could be programmed for a computer, but hardly any
progress has been made in this direction.

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--
Bob Myers