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."

Comments

Re:For the chess nuts

[caferace]

That's true. I know a bunch of engineers that would be hard pressed to match the turing test.

Some of them are pretty good at chess though.

Re:Deep, man.

[tap]

It's a Hitchhiker's Guide reference. In the series by Douglas Adams, there is a computer that called "Deep Thought" that finds the answer to life, the universe, and everything else. (Which is 42). A famous chess playing computer was named Deep Thought. IBM's Deep Blue is a take on that name and IBM's "corporate color" of blue.

Someone posts a chess computer story...

[Howzer]

... and you instantly get a bunch of posts about how it's "not that impressive because the computer is trained to beat just that player".

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.

Eh, kinda...

[Jayde Stargunner]

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

Re:Someone posts a chess computer story...

[Salamander]

you instantly get a bunch of posts about how it's "not that impressive because the computer is trained to beat just that player". 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 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.