https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/ai-and-chess
AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded Output
Excerpt: It seems a battle most impossible to convince a good chunk of the population that AI is nothing more than a model. A model written in code, which of course the coders know because they are writing it, code that carries out explicit instructions, and only explicit instructions. Code that runs on machines that operate in fixed and directed ways. Yet many insist AI’s output is more than its code, and somehow becomes something more than its code, the output the result of some emergent malign or beneficent or at any rate chaotic entity, an entity with greater insight than any mere man.
This is not so. All models only say what they are told to say and AI is a model. Although it may seem to do more than it is told, AI does not. The consequences for not understanding this are beginning to be felt.
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One of the common responses I get when I chant All models only say what they are told to say and AI is a model is this: “No way, Briggs. No coder anticipated the output. They didn’t tell AI to talk about interdimensional guardians. The output of AI is complex beyond the coder’s imagining. Therefore, the AI must be alive.” Or words to that effect.
Chess is an exceedingly simple game with trivial rules. Mathematically speaking, that is. There are only a tiny handful of opening moves allowed, which can be counted using only your fingers and toes.
The number of counter moves to that first move is much larger, since for each of the twenty openings, many different counter moves are possible, but each still drawn from a very small set Which means the number of counter-counter moves (third moves) is larger still, and so on. The possibilities form part of a combinatorial explosion. One estimate, which is close enough for us, says there are some 10^120 possible different chess games.
