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Humankind Makes Last Stand Against Machine

Posted by michael on from the smart-money-is-on-the-computer dept.

MrZeebo writes "According to this Financial Times story, Garry Kasparov has begun another match against a computer chess program on Sunday, this time playing against the Israeli-developed Deep Junior. Kasparov is the highest-rated chess player of all time, and lost to Deep Blue in 1997. According to the article, Deep Junior, despite evaluating less moves per minute than Deep Blue, is considered to be a superior chess player. The match will span 6 games, the last one being February 7th." Kasparov has won the first game.

7 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. He should switch games... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He should switch to Go. Even the greatest computers can't compare to an average player.

    Go is far better suited to the way a human brain works - pattern recognition, neural networks and all that.

    Of course, once a computer arrives that can beat us at Go, then it'll be time to rethink a lot of things :)

    1. Re:He should switch games... by Russellkhan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      " Perhaps this is just a consequence of the fact that computer scientists have studied chess substantially more than they have studied go."

      It's very likely true that there has been less time in man hours spent developing Go playing programs than Chess playing, but there has been a very significant amount of time spent on the problem by some very intelligent people who are both good Go players and good programmers. So I would say that it is unlikely that this is the root of the difference. After all, Backgammon and Checkers have both also had significantly less time dedicated to developing programs that play and the programs out there play at championship level. Go is just a harder game to program. Its style of play doesn't lend itself well to linear lookahead or databases of board positions (or, in the case of backgammon, statistical prediction of dice) as the other games mentioned above do.

      "I also don't understand why people think that because a computer program can play better than you means that you should stop playing. These games are deterministic and finite -- there is a mathematically perfect play whether or not somebody has calculated it. It really makes no difference to me as a chess player that a machine can trounce me any more than it does that Kasparov could trounce me."

      Agreed. The games are still fun and still have something to teach me.

      --
      Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
  2. Re:how can kasparov win? by Gyan · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Possibly because Kasparov doesn't play soley on raw intellect. Gut instinct and that hint of irrationality creeps in. The computer can't take that into account when anticipating Kasparov's possible countermoves.

  3. Re:Yes. by almeida · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't think they are better at chess. I think the computers are just better at the things that are useful in chess. They can analyze moves faster and remember more about their opponent's technique than their human creators. Given enough time and maybe a notebook to keep track of stuff, you could accomplish the same thing. The computer is using the same basic chess rules that everyone else uses. The difference here is the computer can apply the rules ridiculously fast.

  4. A different test: man versus machine by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It seems to me that if you want to pit man versus machine you should pick something that is easy for a man to do. Chess is relatively hard for most humans. Thus by definiton it is not something humans are good at. So making this a test of machine prowsess is exactly the wrong test.

    to put this another way, if the contest were to factor 20 digt numbers, no one woul dbe surprised if the machine beat a human. it would be a stupid test. Just like chess.

    a better test would be a face recognition contest. Or if we need to make it a real game then how about soccer?

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:A different test: man versus machine by Scarblac · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It seems to me that if you want to pit man versus machine you should pick something that is easy for a man to do.

      Seems to me that if you want to have some contest, you pick something that they're both about equally good at. So we don't let people run against cars, and we don't let machines recognize faces against humans.

      When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, it was a huge surprise, he played weakly. Kramnik drew Deep Fritz 3-3 last year. Kasparov is the favorite again in this match, and leads 1-0. It's balanced.

      What makes it more fun is that computers and people approach the game in a totally different way, but the best computers are almost as good as the best humans. This is the right time to be having these contests.

      --
      I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
  5. So, what does this mean? by Millennium · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Garry Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue. This means one of several possibilities:

    1) Computers are more intelligent than humans.
    2) Computers can be made to play better chess than humans.
    3) Computers can be programmed to beat Garry Kasparov.
    4) Chess can be reduced to a set of mathematical computations, which a computer can then perform faster than a human.

    So what is it? And how do you know which one (or ones) are correct? Just a thought, since I think a lot of people are being overly alarmist.