Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Artificial Intelligence)

This is an engaging first-person account, oriented toward the general reader, of how a brilliant young researcher has expanded the envelope of artificial intelligence (AI). The author begins by describing how he has grappled with the fundamental issue of what AI should be. He, like an increasing number of workers who have parted ways with the traditional AI community, insists that intelligent systems exhibit the ability to adapt to changing circumstances in order to achieve goals. Astonishing as it may be to some, most AI systems have no adaptivity whatsoever, and a definition of intelligence as adaptive behavior is indeed a radical departure.The rest of the story relates how the author (with his collaborator, Kumar Chellapilla) has applied his general principles of AI to the specific problem of having the computer teach itself to play checkers. The approach was to obtain a key component of a standard checkers program not by programming it with expert knowledge, but by allowing it to emerge in a process of simulated evolution. In this process, components were evaluated in play against one another, and the better ones survived and generated mutant offspring, while the others were discarded. I omit many details, but the essence is that this simple adaptive system gave rise to Blondie24, a checkers program that plays at the expert level. There are checkers programs that play much better than Blondie24, but none has ever played so well with so little input of human expertise.In sum, the principles are potentially revolutionary, the practical results are extraordinary, and the reading is downright fun.

I was already interested in neural networks, and have read several other books on the subject, all for information on how to design and build neural networks to do various tasks, so I was primed to like this book, but I had no idea how compelling it would be. Fogel does give most of the details necessary to recreate Blondie, but some of the specifics for the later modifications are missing and can be found, I believe, in his and his partner's scientific articles referenced in the book.The first half is quite good, giving very basic background information on neural networks and machine learning algorithms as well as a brief history of the two best known checkers programs, Samuels' machine learning checkers player and Chinook, the best ever player (so far).It's the second half of the book, however, that kicks the story into overdrive. Fogel begins describing how he and his partner, Kumar Chellapilla, made their design decisions, evolved a neural net, then began playing it against humans over the internet. Even if you aren't all that interested in checkers (I am not) the games as they are described by Fogel become at least as interesting as any close sporting event, especially in those cases where the neural net set up traps for its opponents that neither Fogel nor the other player could foresee. There were times that I couldn't stop reading. I'd get off the bus to work, get in the office, and continue until I could pull myself away. The second half of this book is as much a page turner as the best novels I've read.An absolute must read for anyone interested in where AI needs to go.

Blondie24 is a fascinating and informative book that will be absolutely engrossing for anyone with an interest in artificial intelligence and computers. Although Master-level checkers programs have been around for a while, they have all used brute force to achieve their goals. The Blondie24 project represents the first serious attempt since Samuel's experiments in the 1950s to do something much more interesting and elegant: create a checkers program that can learn on its own. This book is easily accessible for the uninitiated, and I guarantee that you'll be swept along.Gil Dodgen, author of the highly acclaimed computer program, World Championship Checkers

An absorbing and enchanting tale of a personal quest for the deeper meaning of AI: the discovery of how intelligence itself arises. Fogel seizes the challenge by capturing the evolutionary process and shaping it to breed a checkers expert from an artificial neural net. Scientists, humanists, and artists will appreciate his inspiring wit and clarity of thought in narrating the growth of Blondie24, a synthetic sentience born inside a desktop PC.