Yes, your restatement feels to me like a clear improvement.
In fact, considering it, I think that if algorithm A is “truly more intelligent” than algorithm B, I’d expect if f(x) is the compute that it takes for B to perform as well or better than A, f(x) could even be super-exponential in x. Exponential would be the lower bound; what you’d get from a mere incremental improvement in pruning. From this perspective, anything polynomial would be “just implementation”, not “real intelligence”.
Yes, your restatement feels to me like a clear improvement.
In fact, considering it, I think that if algorithm A is “truly more intelligent” than algorithm B, I’d expect if f(x) is the compute that it takes for B to perform as well or better than A, f(x) could even be super-exponential in x. Exponential would be the lower bound; what you’d get from a mere incremental improvement in pruning. From this perspective, anything polynomial would be “just implementation”, not “real intelligence”.