Twenty questions
The game of twenty questions is an old one. Alice thinks of a thing or a person or a concept, and Bob tries to guess what it is, by asking yes/no questions. If Bob can get it right in 20 questions or less, he wins. Else Alice wins.
You can now play this game versus a computer program that does surprisingly well. I just tried it out. I thought of an anvil, and the program got it right in 19 questions — even though I answered six of those questions differently from how the program thinks they should be answered for an anvil. After correctly guessing my object, here’s what the program said:
You said it is classified as Mineral, I say Other. Can you make money by selling it? You said Probably, I say No. Can you lift it? You said Probably, I say No. Would you find it on a farm? You said Doubtful, I say Yes. Is it a synthetic material? You said Unknown, I say No. Is it shiny? You said Maybe, I say No.
It then added this tidbit:
It does not matter if our answers disagree, as over time the game will change its answers to reflect common knowledge. If you feel that the game is in error, the only way to fix it is to play again.
This, of course, is how humans learn too. Getting a computer to learn the same way, with the degree of success demonstrated at 20q.net, seems pretty impressive to me.
November 16th, 2004 at 10:02 pm
Fun site, I tried it with “sword” and the computer gave up (although it did guess “sabre” at one point). One of the strange questions it did not agree with me was “Can you use it to make sounds”, I said yes, but the computer said no. If I hit a steel plate with a sword, a loud sound will be made. Cool stuff though.
November 16th, 2004 at 11:40 pm
I played it with the same word, to see if your go had taught it something. It eventually guessed correctly, but after more than 20 questions. But it had arrived at “katana” within 20 questions, and when I said “close”, it didn’t guess sword, but asked several more questions which didn’t seem relevant. It didn’t ask me the question you mentioned, but it did ask “Does it have a hard outer shell?” and I said no, but it disagrees. I don’t think a sword has an outer shell, hard or soft — I think it’s solid through. But I may be wrong. Maybe they make swords with impact-softening rubber cores for more ergonomic slaying. In any case, the game did seem to do better than when you were there, although that could just be because the random questions it picked were better suited to this word.