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Some programs do exhaustive searches for a solution while others do heuristic searches for a similar answer. For example, in chess, the search for the best next move tends to be more exhaustive in nature whereas, in Go, the search for the best next move tends to be more heuristic in nature due to the much larger search space.

Is the technique of brute force exhaustive searching for a good answer considered to be AI or is it generally required that heuristic algorithms be used before being deemed AI? If so, is the chess-playing computer beating a human professional seen as a meaningful milestone?

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If one thinks of intelligence as a continuous measure of optimization power (that is, how much better are outcomes for any unit of cognitive effort expended), then exhaustive search has non-zero intelligence (in that it does actually give better outcomes as more effort is expended) but very, very low intelligence (as the outcomes are better mostly by luck, and the amount of effort expended can be impossibly large).

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If a computer is just brute-forcing the solution, it's not learning anything or using any kind of intelligence at all, and therefore it shouldn't be called "artificial intelligence." It has to make decisions based on what's happened before in similar instances. For something to be intelligent, it needs a way to keep track of what it's learned. A chess program might have a really awesome measurement algorithm to use on every possible board state, but if it's always trying each state and never storing what it learns about different approaches, it's not intelligent.

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Brute force approach is certainly the first step of many in AI programming. But using these experiences the program must learn to find the best solution or at least a closer solution to the problem. Since the first goal in AI is to find any solution, nothing can beat the brute force approach. But then using the previous results of brute force approaches, the program must develop its own heuristics and use this data along with brute force to find the optimal solution.

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    $\begingroup$ "Nothing can beat the brute force approach"? Beat in which sense? $\endgroup$
    – Dave Newton
    Commented Feb 20, 2018 at 16:33
  • $\begingroup$ Welcome to AI I might supplement this answer by noting that some problems are intractable, and can't be solved by brute force. But I certainly agree that brute force algorithms are a fundamental form and function of AI. In a combinatorial game theory, it seems that a game or puzzle, such as Sudoku, may only be said to be solved through brute force (exhaustion). $\endgroup$
    – DukeZhou
    Commented Feb 20, 2018 at 21:54
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Really any 'intelligence' exhibited by a computer is deemed AI, regardless of brute force or use of smart heuristics. For example, a chat bot can be coded to respond to most responses using many, many if statements. This is an AI no matter how poorly coded/designed it is.

The chess playing computer beating a human professional can be seen as a meaningful milestone. I mean, someone programmed a computer to beat grandmaster chess players and chess geniuses. Many thought that wasn't possible since chess is such a complex game. This kind of work likely segued into more complex AI, for if a computer could play chess, then it surely complete other complex tasks as well.

Note how refined chess programming is: magic bitboards, Zobrist hashing, pruning, lazy SMP, and many more. This is perhaps not the sort of milestone of AI that you thought, but again, the things that can be considered AI are pretty broad.

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I dont know why you wouldnt consider it ai since every single thing has used something like it thats been in the recent news.

evolving a neural network is very similar to brute force search, just it hits local optima, because its not exhaustive.

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