Internet distributed learning

Inspired by SETI@Home, distributed computation over the Internet using volunteered computer time is taking off.

Jay : game learning : distributed learning

What could be more enticing for machine learning? A popular project can attract unprecedented amounts of cheap computer time, making genetic algorithms and other resource-hungry learning algorithms feasible for harder problems.

Few distributed game learning projects have started, but I expect more.

projects

- The Distributed Chess Project
The plan is to have a distributed evolutionary algorithm to design a neural network chess evaluator. As of February 2002, the evolutionary algorithm itself is still being written. Software: A Windows screen saver. My assessment: This one-person amateur project is not really underway yet.

- EvoChess
An ongoing project to evolve a chess program. The evolution affects the weights in an evaluation function. Software: A Java client that should run on most platforms. My assessment: This project has limited aims; consider it just for fun.


24 February 2002