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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."
"Kasparov would move Qe4 here, man."
"Whoa, deep blue, man."
"Hey guys, we need a name...for...hey!"
And thus it's perpetuated.
Human chess players never learn about their opponent's behaviors beforehand?
If you know the computer will know how you will play, you should play in a different way. But the computer will obviously know you will know it knows how you play, and thus expect this. As a result, you should alter your strategy back to your original. The computer will also realize you will do this though, so you should again try to alter your playing manner.
That's bull. How is chess harder than the turing test? It has pretty much been proven that brute force calculation can win the game of chess. We still have very little idea of how to beat the turing test. I would say the chess is infinitely easier than the turing test...
Spencer Ogden
I agree with the parent. First of all, (and I do this to be specific, not to be an nitpicker) let's be specific - you are talking using the recognized "turing test", where a computer and people try to convince judges via telatype that they are human. [Turing's original test was slightly different, and included gender as a factor, but that has been disgarded as a red herring]. Now, the reason I say I want to be specific is because in order to "pass" the test, the computer has to fool humans 70% of the time, not just once. No computer has ever come close - IIRC, the last Loebner winner as in the 15% range. So saying that beating a grandmaster in chess is harder than passing the turning test is complete bull
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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.
Some of them are pretty good at chess though.
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.
Well, here's a heads up. That is exactly how human players prepare for matches against each other. They sit down and play through their opponents previous matches, and try to find weaknesses and holes to use against them.
The point of all this is equally questioned. People seem to think that creating large expert systems is a done deal, and no more research needs to be done into how to construct programs that use a set of variables to give advice, in this case which chess piece to move. Again, here's a clue:
This kind of stuff is fundamental, basic research. Absolutely vital and incredibly useful as we continue to learn about how to better realise and utilise computer technology.
Insert old saw about dogs walking here.
I have to take exception with your point on original thought - here's what comes to mind. You say that original thought comes from generating and discounting possible approaches. The example that came to my mind are works by MC Esher. He draws parodixes - things that cannot exist in nature. How could he have created them, being that he could *not* have encountered them, or anything simliar?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
If that fails, he plans to challenge his opponent to a "Double or Nothing" drinking contest at a local bar.
this was puglished yesterday in haaretzdaily.com. It has some interesting details like, for example, the track record of Junior, to this date, and that the competition will have a peace-builing slant to it, too.
Sigged!
Only if the human really doesn't talk about anything in particular, and expects a meaningful response. ALICE cannot give meaningful responces.
ALICE would probably make a good CEO, rather than a conversation tool.
CEOBot: What would you like to know?
Interviewer: What were your profits this year?
CEOBot: What would you like to know about our profits this year?
Interviewer: How much were they?
CEOBot: How much do you think they were?
Interviewer: Well, you claimed 22billion.
CEOBot: I'm afraid I really don't know anything about that. Would you like me to sing you a song?
-Jayde
What's a sig?
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
Or maybe more of a "why would you want to":
Chessbase has several chess programs for sale on their website. While quite inexpensive (~$45-$80 USD) they are advertised as being damn near impossible to beat. In fact, Chessbase's front page highlights one of the programs for sale kicking the ass of the entire Swiss Chess Team!
So why would you want to actually buy one of these programs? They aren't teaching programs. They aren't for a friendly game against the computer. They aren't open sourced (that I could see) so you can't study the algorithms. They are meant to destroy every human they come in contact with.
Does anyone outside of chess grand masters use these things? (How many grand masters are there, anyway?) I'm a very mediocre chess player myself, and if I want my ass handed to me in chess I'll go down to the local high school club and call them all smelly virgins before starting a game. At least I'll have some face-to-face interaction.
So what's the point?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Deep(er) Blue used some special-purpose hardware, but Deep Fritz and Deep Junior don't. Multiprocessors are a commodity nowadays.
Deep(er) Blue's custom ASICs were basically there to make the brute-force approach go faster. They didn't implement some sort of expert system or neural net, they had little to do with sophisticated position evaluation, they were mostly just there to speed up the nuts-and-bolts operations of walking extremely large decision trees.
The scorn you heap upon this post's grandparent seems just a trifle misplaced, since you yourself seem to know little about the programs being discussed. They're a combination of chess-specific knowledge and fast implementations of fairly ancient algorithms, so they're pretty formidable opponents, but in terms of AI research they've progressed little beyond an early-to-mid-80s level. Nobody that I know who actually works in AI would say any different, either.
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...and that is precisely the opportunity that was denied Kasparov. Deeper Blue and its handlers -especially Joel Benjamin - had years to dissect Kasparov's games, but Kasparov had no access to DB's oeuvre. That's not a level playing field.
Another aspect you've overlooked is that human preparation to play a particular opponent is usually on the order of weeks or months, and does not significantly sacrifice the preparer's ability to play other opponents. Even in the middle of preparing to play Kramnik or Anand, Kasparov could go to a tournament and beat just about anyone else. By contrast, DB was in preparation for years and the result was so finely tuned toward playing Kasparov that DB would have fared very poorly in any top-level tournament involving anyone other than Kasparov. That kind of inflexibility is not a hallmark of a intelligence, artificial of otherwise. What it indicates is that the basic methods were so old and so well understood that people have been able to spend years just tuning the implementation.
Making a computer beat the world champion is a respectable feat. However, it's not even the highest goal in computer chess. Making a computer that could beat a series of opponents, without fundamental changes equivalent to a brain transplant between matches, would be more impressive. Making a computer that could win a 16-player round robin tournament against a whole field of top grandmasters - something Kasparov still does regularly, to this day - would be more impressive still. Making a computer that could play speed chess better than Anand or Hawkeye would be another worthwhile challenge in a different direction. Then there's Go, and then a bunch of other challenges, and then there's the real world. Spending years to create a program that can beat one player in one chess match under less-than-fair conditions is really a pretty low goal.
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