“What runs here is a plain-JavaScript port of a native C++ optimal solver I wrot...

dev_dan_2 · 2026-08-17T14:22:16

Hmm, I would say even older than that (which, of course, is in no way intended to be a value statement of any kind, I like the website and the project, cool idea! :D).

In 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo came around and latest from there on, AI was associated heavily with NNs, deep learning and so on (but not with the transformer architecture which became popular later, the foundational paper itself was published in 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need).

If you squint a little, the linked project is basically a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm with optimized implementation, heuristics and so on. I also think that A* was associated with AI due to its use in path finding in early robotics - But I am not sure!

nairboon · 2026-08-17T14:20:28

No, that's still AI in today's sense, just not an LLM.

GPerson · 2026-08-17T15:16:03

On further reflection I actually now disagree that a an algorithm based puzzle solver was ever referred to as AI, even in the context of video games, in which AI refers to the behavior of NPCs.

Mr-Frog · 2026-08-17T21:22:38

> I actually now disagree that a an algorithm based puzzle solver was ever referred to as AI,

"Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" was published in 1995 and included Sokoban as a search-problem example.

GPerson · 2026-08-17T22:25:39

Huh guess I was wrong. Nice!