3

Called the ultimate AI achievement by Q and with an ultimate storage capacity of eight hundred quadrillion bits and a total linear computational speed rated at sixty trillion operations per second, has Data displayed the ability of a top tier strategist?

As example; In “Peak Performance” TNG 2x21 Data beats a 3rd level Strategema Grandmaster from a race feared for their innately strategic minds and in "The Hunted" TNG 3x11, he out-strategizes the genetically enhanced Angosian super-soldier Roga Danar. These are only two of the many examples of his superior strategic prowess.

An example of Data's military strategy programing: From "The Hunted:

INT. DETENTION CELL

Roga and Data are still talking, the atmosphere more
relaxed than before...

                ROGA
        Were you built for combat,
        android?

                DATA
        No. But my program does include
        military strategy... that is how
        I was finally able to anticipate
        your last tactic and capture you.

                ROGA
        You did that? Perhaps you would
        be better at combat than you
        think.
Morgan
  • 26,564
  • 24
  • 132
  • 232
  • 4
    Actually, Data was only able to match the Strategema Grandmaster, not beat him. And after having already being fooled by Roga Danar once, he was able to suspect that Roga was misleading the crew, but was unable to determine his actual goal. And "eight hundred quadrillion bits" is only roughly 100 petabytes, which I'd bet we'll see in personal storage drives within the next century. On paper, Data really isn't that technically impressive. – Xantec Apr 03 '14 at 20:48
  • @Xantec WHAT?! He 'busted up' the Grandmaster and captured the Super Soldier. Not that technically impressive? Tough crowd methinks. – Morgan Apr 03 '14 at 20:59
  • If by "busted up" you mean "one loss, one draw" then you're right. And with Roga, yes, Data did anticipate Roga being in the escape pod, but then Roga still out smarted Data later when he escaped. – Xantec Apr 03 '14 at 21:52
  • 3
    He also lost a chess game to Counselor Troi. – Stan Apr 04 '14 at 01:00
  • 1
    @Xantec Yet another example of Data's superior strategic and tactical abilities, even in the face of countermanding orders and a subversive 1st Officer, while busting a Romulan sneak and creep during the Klingon civil war. "Redemption, Part II" TNG 5x1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98iNFU0IDo0 – Morgan Apr 04 '14 at 01:16
  • I can agree with that example. – Xantec Apr 04 '14 at 01:17
  • @Xantec and don't forget “Elementary, Dear Data” TNG 2x3 where the holodeck in an effort to 'defeat Data' (not Holms) had to remove the safety protocols and create a sentient Moriarty with full access to the Enterprise database. This extraordinary action would not be necessary for anyone else I'm sure. – Morgan Apr 04 '14 at 01:50
  • I will yield to the consensus here and rephrase the question for a less opinion based or subjective answer. – Morgan Apr 04 '14 at 04:04
  • @Morgan Maybe the holodeck is just biased towards Data. Evidence: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Datas_(episode) – Zibbobz Apr 04 '14 at 13:32
  • 1
    @Xantec, IBM has a machine with more than Data's storage capacity, and the USAF has a machine with a couple times Data's processing power. (And the USAF's machine is primarily made of PlayStation 3 consoles...) We may not have commercial devices that can beat Data, but the world has computers that can. The next step is miniaturization! – Brian S Apr 04 '14 at 14:25
  • fastest super computer is 54,902.4 TFlop/s uses intel xeon e5-2692. Fastest general cpu is the intel xeon e5-2697 you would need 120 of these to match data and the max addressable ram using that many cpus is 480petabytes. – Dreamwalker Apr 04 '14 at 15:04
  • Correction those cpus could only support 90petabyte ram – Dreamwalker Apr 04 '14 at 15:27
  • @Xantec Yes he was playing a 3rd level Grandmaster strategist from a race of galactically feared strategists after all. And I doubt that Grandmaster he ground down would ever want to play him again. – Morgan Apr 05 '14 at 04:36

2 Answers2

8

There are examples of Data making poor tactical decisions as well.

  • In the episode Cause and Effect, Data's suggestion leads to the destruction of the Enterprise-D - not just once, but several times, for 17 days. Only when the temporal loop gets to a high enough 'feedback level' and the crew can begin messaging themselves in the past (via Data) does he realize that Riker had the superior tactic.

  • Data doesn't strictly beat the Strategema player; he loses once and then plays him to a stalemate. While forfeiting could be considered an admission of defeat or an implicit loss, it is 'on a technicality'.

  • Troi apparently beat Data at 3-dimensional chess at least once, during the opening scene of Conundrum.

  • Data did not appreciate Captain Picard's strategy for escaping the snare in the episode Booby Trap until the slingshot effect had already been executed.

  • While meaning well, Data shows an inability to strategize emotionally in the episode In Theory.

  • Data cannot replicate his own design, as seen in The Offspring. Nor could he accurately anticipate and account for the cascade failure in Lal's positronic brain.

  • Counselor. Troi. Beat. Data. At. Chess.

These and other examples go to show that Data is not infallible in his ability to forecast and/or strategize. While some of these are not 'strategy' in the way we'd think of strategizing a battle plan or a game of Risk, they point out the hole in Data's reasoning wherein emotion and intuition often enter play.

Stick
  • 5,372
  • 2
  • 25
  • 30
  • 1
    Don't forget to mention that he got beaten at chess by the only person to crash the Enterprise on their first day on the job – Valorum Apr 03 '14 at 21:27
  • 3
    Are we sure Data didn't let her win, the way we'd let a not-too-bright child win a game to make them feel better about themselves? – James Sheridan Apr 03 '14 at 21:29
  • Is Troi beating Data at chess more surprising than it would be with any other character? As I mentioned in my answer at http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/52891/22250 there's plenty of evidence from the show that Troi was skilled at analytical thinking, even if her role on the ship focused more on intuition. – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 21:43
  • 2
    The characters are fairly well fleshed-out over seven years in their habits and proficiencies though. Riker plays trombone, likes jazz, is a good shuttle pilot, hosts Poker in his quarters; there's no grounds upon which to say "But what if he's also a competent Tetris player eh? Eh? You don't know! You weren't THERE" It's the same with Troi; her activities on the ship don't establish her as the first go-to when trying to conceive of an opponent capable of defeating Data. What she does off-screen is not worth the conjecture, don't you think? – Stick Apr 03 '14 at 21:53
  • 1
    And there are a lot of tests I passed to get out of high school, that I would hate to take today. Her being able to pass a "hyperspace physics test" in her Academy days doesn't speak to her current skill set. I used to practice breathing amniotic fluid, but I won't put it on a resume – Stick Apr 03 '14 at 21:56
  • The Bridge Officer's test which I mentioned there was during the time of the show, though. Your comment about Riker is strange, you seem to say there'd be "no basis" for imagining he could be good at anything he wasn't shown doing specifically (including something totally non-intellectual like Tetris), but when arguing against Troi you seem to say that it would somehow be more plausible if another character who was also never shown playing chess was shown as an "opponent capable of defeating Data". Is the plausibility based on some notion of "intelligence" separate from specific skills? – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 22:22
  • The real point here is that Troi beats Data on the basis that "chess is a game of intuition". Whether or not this is a factual or useful statement isn't relevant; it's that Data loses to Troi not on the merit of intelligence. His strategy fails because he does not have an affinity for emotional intuition. For the purposes of the argument, Troi's intelligence is not the stat she's rolling against. – Stick Apr 03 '14 at 22:48
  • 3
    It was more the fact that "oh, suddenly she's amazing at chess, despite having never shown any ability at it whatsoever before or since" – Valorum Apr 03 '14 at 22:49
  • 1
    @Richard - yes, but neither had anyone else on the show shown any ability at chess up till that point, that's why I phrased my question as "Is Troi beating Data at chess more surprising than it would be with any other character?" – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 23:00
  • @Stick - intuition can play a big role in intellectual problems, like hunches about which of many possible strategies is worth focusing attention on to analyze and develop further. Consider Einstein's quote: "it is intuition that improves the world, not just following a trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under one law. ... Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge." – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 23:06
  • 1
    @Richard - in what way was she portrayed as "incompetent" at tasks she was assigned to (or took upon herself, like becoming a bridge officer)? Examples? – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 23:11
  • 1
    @Hypnosifl - Are we ignoring the fact that she crashed the Federation's flagship TWICE? – Valorum Apr 03 '14 at 23:16
  • @Richard, are you joking or serious? If serious, maybe you forgot the context of these, the first time in Generations she only took command of the saucer section when there was about to be a warp core breach, and the breach was premature which sent the saucer hurtling towards the planet, yet the saucer still managed to land with only "light" casualties. And in Nemesis Picard sent her an order to ram Shinzon's ship, so she carried it out. – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 23:35
  • I don't understand what you're not understanding. You asked if Data is "the best individual strategist known in the Galaxy" and I provided an argument which outlines his described lack of emotional and intuitive aptitude. The fact that Troi beat him with intuition is enough, isn't it? It feels like you prefer to embiggen Troi to keep Data on top of the strategy pile, by saying her intuition is somehow grand enough to suggest that it is equivalent to Data's intelligence, which is apples and tricorders. Data can lose; that should be enough. – Stick Apr 03 '14 at 23:37
  • @Stick - I didn't ask the question about whether he was a good strategist, I only came into this discussion because the mocking of Troi seemed unfair; I don't think Troi beating Data at chess is really any more surprising (or implies anything worse things about Data's strategic abilities) than it would be if Picard or Geordi had beat him at chess. Certainly I would agree that the fact that any human could beat him at any strategic game would suggest he's not "the best individual strategist in the Galaxy". – Hypnosifl Apr 03 '14 at 23:40
  • 1
    My mistake, you are indeed not the OP. Either way I think you're reading a narrative here that doesn't exist. For my part I am not saying Troi is flatly unintelligent; however you have to concede that even in IRL where a non-sentient computer can corner a grandmaster (with no concept of intuitive intelligence to lack OR acquire), the putative situation wherein the ship's counselor sticks it to Data on the basis that chess is as much a game of intuition as it is intelligence is… stretching it a bit. – Stick Apr 03 '14 at 23:55
  • @Stick, I agree it seems implausible given what we know about chess computers in real life, although as I and Hurkyl suggested in our answers in the thread I linked to earlier, it could be that Data was intentionally trying to adopt a more humanlike search strategy rather than taking advantage of his computing power to do a brute-force search of a huge number of possible moves as real chess programs do. – Hypnosifl Apr 04 '14 at 00:08
  • 2
    And for what it's worth - maybe Troi did crash the Enterprise not once but twice. She didn't crash it for 17 days. Data ran Admiral Frasier's Miranda-class Cadillac into the starboard nacelle for 17 days. It took that long to figure out, what with all the echoes of deja-vu and memory and whatnot, that maybe don't trust Mr. Tricorder to make the call on this. Picard's deference to Data in this situation was arguably the most destructive act the two have ever conspired to commit. – Stick Apr 04 '14 at 00:16
-2

Data has been called the ultimate AI achievement by Q (he should know). He has also been complemented for his fluid tactical ability by a genetically and chemically enhanced Angosian super-soldier, Roga Danar. He has also demonstrated the able to play the difficult strategy game 'Strategema' to a draw against galactically renowned strategist Sirna Kolramia himself, a famed 3rd level Grandmaster from a race feared for their innately strategic minds. It's obvious that Data has been programed to be a master strategist. Maybe not the 'best ever' but obviously programed to be a formidable master level strategist and combat tactician.

Morgan
  • 26,564
  • 24
  • 132
  • 232