Eric Armstrong

Eric Armstrong

In the 70's, I was attending Ohio State University. I minored in Philosophy, Political Theory, Systems Theory, Mathematics, and Psychology, rolling them all into a degree under the heading: "Techniques of Analysis: Methods for Defining and Resolving Problems". (My middle name is "eclectic".)

The systems theory work occurred in a variety of departments, since many departments seemed to have one course devoted to a systems theoretic view of their subject matter. It was in this courses that I was exposed to the concepts of feedback loops and unpredictability of large, complex systems. (Forrester was particularly clear in this regard, as I recall.)

I was exposed to computers during my work in the Political Science department (where I mainly concentrated on Political Theory). It was then that I saw the computer's potential for simulating complex systems in order to help us anticipate otherwise unforeseeable reactions to policy interventions and figure a way out of the kinds of messes that were already on the horizon -- problems which are even more acute today.

So the reason I got into computers in the first place was to use them as a tool to augment human reasoning.

After doing graduate work in computer science, I experimented with "artificial intelligence", in the form of a game program that did a tree search. It implemented alpha/beta pruning and original evaluation heuristics. It performed quite well in international competition: It was the first program to extend the search horizon for forced moves (Hans ____ at Carnegie Melon later wrote a paper on the subject). It was also the only program to "play like a human" after securing an initial advantage. (Most programs at the time worked hard to get a good position, but were incapable of effectively capitalizing on it afterwards.)

As a result of the forced move searches and its unique heuristics, the program managed to completely "wipe out" its opponent on two occasions -- the only tournament wipeouts ever recorded in competition. (One of them was against David Levy's entry. David, famous for his $10,000 bet that no computer would beat him at chess by 1980, was running a program written by one of his company's programmers -- a program that happened to be using the same algorithm that early versions of my program had used -- and that later versions had been designed to beat.)