The confluence of happenstance that occurs to make this a reality is pretty amazing to witness.
Unfortunately it starts with the passing of Douglas Lenat. But that enabled Stanford to open up their 40 year old archive, which they still had, of Lenats work.
Somehow, someway, someone not only stumbled upon EURISKO, but also knew what it was. One of the most notorious AI research projects of the age that actually broke out of the research labs of Stanford and out into the public eye, with impactful results. Granted, for arguably small values of “public” and “impactful”, but for the small community it affected, it made a big splash.
Lenat used EURISKO to find a very unconventional winning configuration to go on to win a national gaming tournament. Twice.
In that community, it was a big deal. The publisher changed the rules because of it, but Lenat returned victorious again the next year. After a discussion with the game and tournament sponsors, he never came back.
Apparently EURISKO has quite a reputation in the symbolic AI world, but even there it was held close.
But now it has been made available. Not only made available, but made operational. EURISKO is written in an obsolete Lisp dialect, Interlisp. But, coincidentally, we have today machine simulators that can run versions of that Lisp on long lost, 40 year machines.
And someone was able to port it. And it seems to run.
The thought of the tendrils through time that had to twist their way for us to get here leaves, at least me, awestruck. So much opportunity for the wrong butterfly to have been stepped on to prevent this from happening.
But it didn’t, and here we are. Great job by the spelunkers who dug this up.
Enough of the Traveller tournament story is dodgy and inconsistent enough that it's very hard to say what actually happened beyond Lenat winning the tournament twice in a row with some kind of computer assistance,
Basically, with the Traveller tournament Lenat appears to have stumbled onto a story that caught the public's imagination, and then through the milked it for all he could to give his project publicity and to make it appear more
successful than it actually was. And if that required embellishing the story or just making shit up, well, no harm no foul.
Even when something is technically true, it often turns out that it's being told in a misleading way. For example, you say that "the publisher changed the ruleset". That was the entire gimmick of the Traveller TCS tournament rules! The printed rulebook had a preset progression of tournament rules for each year.
Unfortunately it starts with the passing of Douglas Lenat. But that enabled Stanford to open up their 40 year old archive, which they still had, of Lenats work.
Somehow, someway, someone not only stumbled upon EURISKO, but also knew what it was. One of the most notorious AI research projects of the age that actually broke out of the research labs of Stanford and out into the public eye, with impactful results. Granted, for arguably small values of “public” and “impactful”, but for the small community it affected, it made a big splash.
Lenat used EURISKO to find a very unconventional winning configuration to go on to win a national gaming tournament. Twice.
In that community, it was a big deal. The publisher changed the rules because of it, but Lenat returned victorious again the next year. After a discussion with the game and tournament sponsors, he never came back.
Apparently EURISKO has quite a reputation in the symbolic AI world, but even there it was held close.
But now it has been made available. Not only made available, but made operational. EURISKO is written in an obsolete Lisp dialect, Interlisp. But, coincidentally, we have today machine simulators that can run versions of that Lisp on long lost, 40 year machines.
And someone was able to port it. And it seems to run.
The thought of the tendrils through time that had to twist their way for us to get here leaves, at least me, awestruck. So much opportunity for the wrong butterfly to have been stepped on to prevent this from happening.
But it didn’t, and here we are. Great job by the spelunkers who dug this up.