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Men vs. Machines
FFriedel writes "In October classical chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik is scheduled to play Deep Fritz in Bahrain. Now Garry Kasparov, who lost his title to Kramnik in 2000, but is still ranked as the strongest player in the world, has announced that he will play the computer chess world champion Deep Junior in Jerusalem at almost exactly the same time. Both programs are distributed by ChessBase. In 1997 Kasparov lost his famous match against Deep Blue."
My father has been a chess fanatic for years upon years. He's read books upon books and is really good. He can beat any mere mortal that he plays. There are a bunch of people on Yahoo! games and other online chess networks that he can play and can compete with, but they are a distinct minority... it comes down to the rankings. Point is, my dad is really good.
There was a chess program for the Vic 20 that could whip my dad's ass every time. Machines have been whipping general players asses for a very long time. My dad is really good but for all of that my dad is still an amateur and could never hope to make a showing in a real competition. It's only the great grandmasters that give the machines trouble... these grandmasters are several orders of magnitude better than the amateur players like my father and are far better than most pros. It says a *LOT* that a machine is able to beat someone like Kasparov... even knowing his moves ahead of time.
It's true that the machine was made just to beat kasparov, but that was probably from a lack of programmer time..... it could be programmed the same, and a Bobby Fisher module added, and a Karpov module and a Kramnik module and so on.
Why not put the best 2 chess playing machines against one another... will they both short circuit like the 'WHOPPER' in wargames?
Jon Bardin
Look at a few of the bots out there. Alicebot for example. You get this bot talking to someone over ICQ for a little bit and they will not know the difference. The machine wouldn't be able to beat an AI researcher who knows how to ask it the correct questions to reveal that it's a machine, but to a regular human they could have a long conversation and the human would never know.
Humans and computers don't play chess the same way. The grandmasters can forsee, what is it like 10 of every move into the game, while the computer can see every move forseeable. I've never been a big fan of playing computers in chess, and that goes way back to the old battle chess game.... remember that one, where your characters would duke it out when a player made a capture? Anyways, I was able to beat that one a couple times, but mostly it totally wooped my ass for the simple fact I was 10, didn't have much *game* and lacked the mental capacity to see 100 moves into the game. IMO, the computer should be limited to a set amount of moves and time, and should have to consider which moves it should concentrate on, instead of looking at every single move possible. I'd also like some randomization in the game.
I have to take issue with the idea that humans have anything more than rule evaluation and database searching in their brains. Human development, in my opinion, seems to suggest that everything we do is based on having screwed it once before. Burn your hand on something? Don't touch it again. Old milk tastes nasty? Don't drink it again.
This is a great point for debate, but i am of the opinion that the human brain is just a large collection of facts (a database), a really fast processor, and really efficient algorithms for searches. Original thought, i feel, is done in a similar way to computers.... generate all the possibilities and evaluate the outcome, choose the best one... we can do it tremendously better than machines and that is why it appears to be original thought, but is merely extrapolating from current rules.
Who knows who the world champion is in chess? There is all that politcal garbage out there with FIDE and rankings. Bah!
And as far a computer beating a human? Its just not that interesting a problem anymore. Especially when Ken Thompson (of UNIX fame) showed 20 years ago that brute force searches was the way to create a winning system against a human. Not very sporting. A great book on this was "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" edited by Peter Frey.
Its fun to watch humans race each other. Its boring to watch a human race a car. I think the same holds with humans, computers and chess competition.
I'm a chess fan, but I dont see any point in the computer vs. human matches. these "AI" chess playing computers simply look at threes and a database of good/common moves. real AI doesnt use trees (too many possibilities)
IBM even trained deep blue for kasparov, but kasparov never got a chance to play deep blue so could not have any idea of weaknesses in it's game (eg positions not in its database where it would have to waste time looking at the move tree.) which forced him to play very nonstandard games and use styles he is not used to using
to me, the fact that deep blue took kasparov does not mean anything except that kasparov is a truly amazing player (who else can compete against a super-comptuer programmed by computer scientists at a top corporation created soley to beat them?)
even more amazing is that kasparov only lost the series on a game where he was completely off
That hasn't turned out to be the case. The search algorithms that the chess-playing programs use don't appear to be any great use for anything except playing chess (or closely related games like go or checkers).
Personally, I want to see a computer kick Kasparov's and Kramnik's ass (though I'm unconvinced it's going to happen this time around, it certainly will eventually) so that chess players shut up about defending the honor of humanity or some such rubbish. Knowing a little about how chess-playing programs work, I feel about as threatened by the prospect that the world chess champion can be trounced by a computer than the fact that in one second the PC I'm typing this at can do more arithmetic operations than I'll do in a lifetime.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Slightly OT, but...
:)
I'm more interested in seeing someone write a strong Go opponent. It's pretty obvious that chess is rather simple for a powerful computer to brute force, but even the most sophisticated hardware and software can be beaten by an amateur Go player. The strongest Go programs rate at around the 8-kyu level (Go ratings start at 30-kyu for complete beginners, on up to 1-kyu, then from 1-dan to 9-dan for pro players).
There have been cash awards (on the order of a million dollars in at least one instance) put out on the table for developers who could write a Go program capable of beating a certain level player. So far, nobody's succeeded. MindZine has a nice (albeit a bit dated) article explaining why this is.
When a computer can play a really strong game of Go, I'll be impressed.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Umm, there is a plethora of programs out there which manage to beat all but the "super grand masters". Programs such as Crafty are able to beat practically any human in lightening and blitz games, and hold their own very well in standard games.
Take for example the reports of "Fischer" on the Internet, beating Nigel Short after giving away what amounts to a 10 move advantage. There is no way a human can give such a highly ranked player such an advantage in a blitz game and win so convincinly, it was obviously a bot running on the Crafty engine (or something similar), beating the crap out of Short.
So yes, there are general engines out there which are very highly rated and can beat 85% to 90% of grand masters.
Score 5, wrong. The name indeed comes from "Deep Thought", but the reference goes quite a bit further back than that, namely to a "chess playing automaton" that predated computers, and turned out to be a hoax, as it contained a diminuitive chess grandmaster within its confines.
One should expect this from slashdot I guess.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.