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In the strict sense, yes, brute force implies exhaustive search. But it often refers to all algorithms that leverage computational power as their main tool. For

In the strict sense, yes, brute force implies exhaustive search. But it often refers to all algorithms that leverage computational power as their main tool. For example, many people referred to Deep Blue as "brute-force" machine, even though it used Alpha-Beta pruning. In that second sense MCTS is very much a brute force algorithm. Its knows nothing about the domain of the problem and works better the more computer cycles you throw at it. Point being, it is significant that something like MCTS can be so effective at Go even without machine learning.

argonaut 11y ago
Yep. Chess engines are widely considered to be brute force. Last I checked, chess engines don't search every state. They stop at a certain point.
- gcp 11y ago
  They don't just stop, they cut off arbitrary subtrees if there's compelling heuristical evidence they won't affect the result.
Scea91 11y ago
But by that definition since AlphaGo was running on over a thousand of CPU's and hunders of GPUs it was brute force as well?
- gcp 11y ago
  Of course it was. If your explanation of AlphaGo somehow involves saying it was different from chess programs you can stop right now - you're just entirely wrong. Whether chess engines and go engine are brute force or not just depends on how you define brute force: * If you cut variations where you have heuristical indications they don't affect the result, is that still brute force? * If you cut variations where you have mathematical, provable evidence they don't affect the result, is that still brute force?