When AI Experts Have “It's Alive” Moments

I think these moments don't just happen to AI experts. They can happen anywhere you're solving a problem with algorithms complicated enough to exhibit significant emergent phenomena.

This happened to me years ago when I wrote my first chess program. I finished the very first working version. It was really primitive and only searched to a fixed 3 or 4 ply. The evaluation function was extremely primitive (taking only material into account) and it played horribly. I could soundly beat it every time. I didn't know anything about game programming at the time, so I experimented around with whatever random ideas I could think up. Nothing seemed to work well until I made a very small tweak with some kind of selective extensions. Boom! It immediately started trouncing me.

I think that is the "it's alive" moment for game programmers. It's a magical moment to realize that your creation has exceeded your abilities..."outgrown you" as it were. No, it's nowhere near the significance of the "it's alive" moments that modern AI experts might experience, but I think it's the same feeling.