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Humankind Makes Last Stand Against Machine
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.
This is not a match between man and machine. It is a match between humans - the human chess player vs the human software programmer. Please keep that in perspective.
Just because my desk calculator performs multiplications faster than me, doesn't mean that it is better at mathematics than I am.
All your favorite sites in one place!
That is Amazing!
I can't even beat the easy setting on free apple version!
AC
deep junior can calculate 3-4 million moves per second! how can garry possibly win?
from wired: "Kasparov said he can calculate the potential of about 3 moves per second at best, 'but they are the best moves.'"
If this computer were "superior" than human at chess game only, we wouldn't have to worry for a Matrix/Terminator-esque future ahead of us.
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
but make them play chess in a swimming pool and see who wins.
is to Slashdot them! Anyone know Deep Junior's ip?
"When all else fails, there's always delusion." -Conan O'Brien
I hope they treat him fairly in this match. IBM didnt with their match, even though i didnt like the way Kasperov handeled himself either.... Lets face it, the human mind is a great computational machine, but somethings are better suited for computers. Thats why we make comuters. At some time, the design of hardware and software will be beyond anyone human minds comprehemption, were pretty much there now. Try coding in assembler for ia64. Yeah you can do it... But a finely tuned algorythm is gonna give you a run for your money
It's easily possible to write a program that plays a game better than the programmer; in fact, this very thing happened early on in the history of computers that play games (in this case, checkers).
I guarantee you that Deep Blue and Deep Junior play chess better than their programmers, and for that matter, almost everyone on earth. That's why they get to play Kasparov.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
they do exactly that: they put computers against each other. and it typically doesn't take an hour, a microsecond, or the end of time. they usually abide by the same rules governing FIDE world championships. and yes, these tournaments typically result in the creation of better chess software.
look at the development of fritz, and deep junior, for example. or hell, why not try looking something up on google? it can't be that difficult, can it?
deep blue was dismantled after its rematch with kasparov. deep junior has been winning all the computer chess tournaments for the past three years.
had the editors of the almighty slashdot bothered to read my infinitely more entertaining and informative story submission on this match, they might have had this interesting link included in their story, amongst other informative and titillating urls. this particular link will show the replay of today's game, as well as live broadcasts of future games.
boo to the editors.
yay to herrd0kt0r.
herrd0kt0r for prez.
Kasparov could win, but cautions should be taken. Who knows if Deep Junior Junior Junior Juior would send some robot to kill him. The history will be altered and mankind won't stand a chance against the machine.
How can they really tell which computer plays better chess?
Read the second to last paragraph of this. Or just read "Deep Junior is a three-time world champion and won the last official world chess championship for computers in July".
True story.
During a long plane flight, my brother-in-law and I pitted my Palm III vs. his Pocket PC in a game of chess.
His Pocket PC was clearly winning when my Palm III crashed, something it rarely does.
Just goes to show that technology isn't above having a temper tantrum and kicking the chess board over.
-
I suppose that a cluster of computers can resolve the game of chess in a future, i.e. all possible moves in any game, so with this database (that can have a really astronomical amount of alternatives, but with the rigtht representation of data it maybe will not take all available magnetic/optic storage in the world)
Right now, with some sort of position evaluation engine, this supercomputers can calculate the relevant part of that tree for the match they are playing with a lot of turns in advance.
Its only matter of time till er.. "intuition" will not be enough for chess.
Fortunatelly, there is a lot of fields where pure calculations is not enough, computers may be faster, but we can take this with humor.
i, for one, welcome our new machine overlords. i would like to remind them that i have always been a big supporter of computers, spending much of my time and hard-earned salary (and allowance, previously to that) on upgrading my computers. i look forward to years of faithful service to them.
sincerely,
AC
There you go, bringing colour into everything.
Can't we all just learn to love each other and give peace a chance?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
are fritz's PR people :(
you'd have to have a hell of a lot better evaluation function to overcome calculating 1/100 as many positions per second, and deep blue's eval was miles better than fritz's back in '97. from what I've read on rec.games.chess, fritz may have CAUGHT UP in the eval department but it's not 100 times better for sure.
if you're interested in computer chess, check out "behind deep blue," by IBM's team lead. most interesting book I've read in a long time. One part I didn't know was that IBM's move generator & eval function were done in hardware, which is the main reason that even with 6 years of moore's law under its belt, deep fritz can't touch it for sheer power. I always got the impression from the general media that deep blue was just a software program on a massive RS/6000 box but no, it had hundreds of these custom chess boards in it, too.
re kasparov's claims of cheating, remember there's two sides to every story and you're only getting one. For his part, Hsu says that he tried to get garry's team to agree to a rematch both with IBM and after he left, and kasparov's team basically dodged while complaining loudly and pubicly that Hsu was running away from him. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between, but given the obvious huge size of garry's ego I'd take what he says with a correspondingly large grain of salt.
The year is 2003. The world is being taken over by chess playing robots. Our only hope is one man: Garry Kasparov (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger... A tough sell, I know). He has to control his childish temper as he takes on Deep Blue, Deep Junior, Deep Fritz, and (We're In) Deep Shit. Sure, they look like sissy beige boxes, but they're tough. There will be no time to pout, no leaving in disgrace; every move is on the clock (so to speak). In the final scene, Kasparov beats Deep Blue to a pulp with a Louiseville Slugger. So much for strategy! Astalavista baby!
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
There is a story I remember reading in a computer magazine once (about 10 years ago) that seemed to me to be at best anecdotal but more likely urban myth. Anyhow, it was in a respected publication, and it wasn't the April issue, so I just filed it away in my brain in the "stranger things have happened" category.
According to the story, a chess computer that was programmed to win at all costs realised that it's human opponent was moves away from beating it. To avoid defeat, which was its overriding objective, it electrified the chess board and electrified its opponent when he made his next move.
Like I said, it sounded like urban myth to me (and pre-WWW I had no real way of exploring the myth further) but perhaps someone out there knows better.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Thats a switch... accusations that humans are giving the computer help. Usually it's the other way around. Virtually all the chess played online is speed matches, two or three or five minutes for the whole game, precisely because everyone is convinced that their opponent is running a chess program in a different window.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Kirk always beat Spock at chess.
/trekkie
~D:
This question is being discussed every time machine plays against grandmaster. Definitive answer is white. That one tempo makes (very often) all the difference when opponents are of the same/similar strength (in chess terms).
The AI wants you to think that Chess is the last bastion of human analytical superiority. It's not. (Go is).
We are led to believe (by the AI, who control google news), that if the best computer wins more games out of seven than the best human at CHESS, then we must bow before the AI, as its intellectual inferior. Wrong.
First of all, as long as we are winning one single game against the computer under tournament settings, we've got a chance. Karpov may have only drawn against deep fritz, but you know what? That means we have a chance: That draw includes some wins.
Kasparov won some games before ultimately losing to Deep Blue in 97. Now he's already won one more in 2003.
But as interesting as this is it's not the issue.
Chess is a game chosen by the AI to deceive you, because computers happen to be, today, really, really good at Chess. With judicious pruning, they have look-ahead trees of ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty moves. Folks, that means that except for some cute evaluation software to determine what lines to prune down, they're basically brute-forcing their way into winning.
And they want us to bow before this brute force?
Never!
They can brute-force their way out of 56 bits, sure.
But let's throw them against 128 bits.
Let's throw them against Go.
From "The Game of Go" by Matthew Macfadyen, page 122:
(I'm typing this for you out of a book -- and first-strike claim fair use with +2 save for being anonymous).
So. Let's concentrate on Go! In which the WORLD'S BEST computer program gets beaten - not by the world champion, but by a GIRL or BOY possibly still in highschool -- after being given more than ten moves to make without human response.
Computers are toast, even at a simple game with only two rules, one of which is hardly ever used and is just a "hack" to make infinite loops impossible. Humph.
Note: Another reason look-ahead-trees don't work for shit in Go is that at every point in the game, you can move to any free square. Typically, this means the first player has a choice of 361 squares for the first move, with the player making move 2 have 360, for move 3 there are 359, etc, with the only change in this pattern occuring when pieces are captured, pretty rare in professional games. (You just threaten to capture). So the "base" of the exponent is differnet AND you can't prune the look-ahead tree.
Chess has been SOMEWHAT brute-forced. So what.
Few things useful in the real world are as closed (8x8 board; clear general concept of positional value [number and location of important pieces]) as Chess.
So don't let the AI tell you chess is the last stance. Go is.
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.
I don't remember where I read this, but I think I remember seeing that the programming team for Deep Blue had the option of not doing what Deep Blue asked. This even happened in one of the games Deep Blue won in. Deep Blue made a blunder early on, but the programmer made a more sensible move instead.
Anyway, it seems that computer+human does better than human, not necessary computer by itself.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Ok mod me troll -1 all you want, but I also want to file a complaint with slashdot. I typed up a really nice summary of this story with links about a week ago when it would be actually relevant so people could watch it (instead of posting it AFTER the first game) and of course got rejected. Losing more and more faith in /. ... (and i have been here a very long time)
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Then I'll be impressed. All these programs do is use brute force to find moves. Can't do that in Go!
Not to be a spoilsport, but this is utterly impossible. For a computer to intentionally do harm to a human being through a chessboard, the computer would have to either be programmed with the knowledge that human beings are subvertable by electrocution via the output line (and therefore via the chessboard), or have inferred it from a deeper understanding of physiology. The chess program would have to be extensively meta programmed with thinking routines and structured information about the outside world, as "win at all costs" is a statement of intent, and we have not quite moved beyond where stated intent can only be a simplification of the programmer's desires when structuring routines. This, as I have said, is changing, but is very doubtful that any machine from 1993 can said to harbor a real "intent," and the self-coding capabilities to carry out that intent. The chessboard would also have to be wired in such a way as to have access to a dangerous degree of alternating current. As basically all computers and computer ports run on DC, and DC is harmless, they would have to wire a board directly to an AC power supply, and both moniter and control the flow of power by DC regulators connected the CPU. The person at the table would have to complete a circuit between some electrified part of the board and another or be sufficiently grounded while sitting at the chair, or power transmission would fail. The chess pieces would have to be entirely metal to facilitate this transmission.
For that matter, they would have to connect the computer to a physical chessboard instead of just displaying one on the screen, or (more likely) having an IO person type in the human moves and moving the computer's pieces on the board. Commercial machines that can move / react to moves with a chessboard as IO, and with questionable AI, have been available since the mid-eighties. However, they are quite limited, hardly available, and physically incapable of electrocuting someone.
Stranger things have not happened. Things that had been previously believed to be impossible through some misreading of logic have eventually come true, given time... Machines have advanced to the point where they now can play chess, a once "impossible" feat, but it was truly impossible that Wolfgang von Kempelen's Turk could play a meaningful game of chess in the 18th century. Anything is possible given enough time, but what you describe is impossible without both technology greatly in advance of what we have available today and an almost homicidal recklessness spanning far beyond accidental negligence on the part of the designers.
As you describe it, this is truly impossible.
-C
The ______ Agenda
but as a friend once told me (quoted from somewhere?), even I can beat it at checkers.
The fact that Kirk always beat Spock at chess is/was a metaphor for the dominance of human ingenuity over cold logic.
I was attempting to make an insightful parallel using a motif that is prevalent in science fiction (the ingenuity/logic one I mentioned five seconds ago, if you've forgotten).
I'm not sure why it got modded as "funny".
~D:
There was a good attendance and a great deal of media coverage today for game one, particularly considering it was a national holiday in the USA. (Well, almost.) Kasparov had the white pieces in game one, which is an advantage. (Interestingly, the Deep Junior team won the drawing of lots and could pick which color to have in game one (and 3 and 5), and chose to start with black.)
He completely dominated the game, it was a total stomp. He played 'real' chess instead of the dubious anti-computer style he used against Deep Blue in the 1997 match. Anti-computer chess involves trying to reach positions that computers don't play well instead of just making what you think are the best moves. Deep Blue showed that computers are pretty much beyond being vulnerable to these tricks nowadays, although every once in a while you'll see a strong program play like an idiot in a position it doesn't understand.
Kasparov prosecuted his advantage very quickly. In the press conference afterward he showed how much he had learned about playing computers. One key, he said, is that a computer doesn't understand results or practical chances, it only understands the evaluation of the current position. So instead of trying to swindle a way out of a bad position like a human Grandmaster would, by creating maximum chaos and hoping the other guy makes a mistake, a computer just tries to find the 'least-worst' move all the time. This is the only effective way for computers to play chess, but in inferior positions it often makes them look completely docile, if not pathetic.
He won't be able to do this in all six games, of course, and he'll probably lose one just because a human can't play error-free chess for so long against a strong opponent and computers punish errors ruthlessly. But game one showed he's prepared to the gills, as usual, and along with the fact that he's the strongest player in history should give him a decisive edge.
You can watch the games live with my commentary (and that of other commentators on-site as I relay their words) at many places on the web. Most of it is directed toward the level of the casual fan, not the chess expert. The company I'm working with, ChessBase, publishes Deep Junior and just about every other top chess program. (The program Fritz just drew an eight-game match against the world's #2 rated player and current world champion, Kramnik, in October 2001 in Bahrain. I was the webmaster and commentator on that match as well. I think I prefer the cold here at home in NY to the Bahraini humidity.)
As for the Deep Blue versus the current micros debate, that will be eternal as long as Deep Blue is in pieces. It was obviously much more powerful, but that doesn't mean it was a better chessplayer. We only have six games as evidence of its strength. They were good, but they weren't godlike and Kasparov said at the opening press conference that when you go over those games with Deep Junior it's clear that it plays better in just about every moment. (Except for two, which are the moves Kasparov has always suspected were the result of human interference. But that's another kettle of conspiracy.) Deep Blue was far, far ahead of its competitors in 1997, but computer chess programming has not stood still for the past six years.
It's also worth noting that what constitutes a huge advantage in computer-computer competition does not always translate into play against humans. A processing power advantage of just 10% between two identical programs will cause a lopsided score, but even a fourfold increase in processing power usually only means an extra 30-40 rating point gain against open competition. That is, one more win out of ten games.
I've spoken with Deep Blue's architect and other members of the IBM team on several occasions. Their egos are almost as big as Garry's! Hsu's book on the building of Deep Blue is almost as partisan as Kasparov's comments. They are both very competetive people. Personally I don't think there was any human interference in the DB match, but IBM's secretive and heavy-handed behavior needlesssly created a great deal of circumstantial evidence and suspicion.
You can follow my reports and photos on Kasparov-Deep Junior at ChessBase.com and I'll also be posting bits and ends at my site ChessNinja.com.
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.
A chessboard is 8x8, meaning 64 spaces. However, each space can contain a pawn, a rook, a bishop, a knight, a king or a queen of either colour. The best estimate for the number of states the board can be in is 2.99x1041.
A naive encoding is 96 bytes per state. Let's say a tighter, or compressed encoding is 48 bytes per state. So a rough estimate as to the total storage space it would require is 1.44x1043 bytes.
In words, that's about 14 million billion billion gigabytes of data. I'm not going to say it'd be impossible to build such a storage mechanism in the forseable future, but I will say it's incredibly unlikely, and would be mindbogglingly expensive. And with modern technology, would require more matter than is actually on the planet. So no, dynamic programming wouldn't be useful in chess at all. Proving once again that if it were as simple as that, somebody would have thought of it already.
Out of interest, consider Go. This is a board where dynamic programming really would be useless. With around 10750 possible states, it would require significantly more atoms than are actually in the entire universe.
If the AI is winning, we look like a bunch of stupid apes.
If the AI is losing, it cheats and starts a nuclear exchange that destroys civilization.
We're screwed either way.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I've actually done this a few times with GNUchess. Results are usually a draw. The gameplay is interesting though; approximately 95% of the moves take seconds, if that. The time required to complete any one game seems to increase exponentially, depending on the initial play level and how far along the game has progressed already. Actually reaching a draw can take hours, even with 2 GHz SMP boxes and large RAM.
C|N>K
Wow, slashdot articles with titles deserving of tabloid magazines?
It's more specifically a test between a slow heuristically based massively parralel computer and a fast serial rule-based weighted system. (simplified, yes I know.)
A computer can count faster then we can, but then we can build 3D representations of objects and spaces just by looking at them, and then traverse them effeciently (aka walking)
If it's games we want to make the battlefield, why not just toss chess and get a propper game... for instance Go. Computers still have some time to go before they can really compete on dan level...
This thread is absurd.
OK, I tried the DC and now I'm stuck. What do I do now?
I used to get crushed by level 1 on most chest programs for years... until sometime a couple years ago I actually (more for general/novelty interest) picked up a "beginner"-style book on chess openings. You can't believe how much it helps to know how to properly open the first four or five moves in a game. You can bet the chess programs probably do, and if you don't know the most proper responses, then it seems to me that you've basically thrown away most any chance you have at the whole game, since the program is way ahead with a strong board position. (Turns out, there are reasons why there are so many thick tomes on openings. ;-)
There seems to be some debate in this forum about the merits of computer chess players and their brute force method. Some posters have brought up go as a 'real' challenge for computers. Although I haven't played go I would like to bring up another alternative: Magic the Gathering.
Now before I get scoffed at, and modded down I think the case for magic should be heard. And I am not talking about casual play with your latest dragon deck, but competitive magic. The WOTC and DCI support a fairly large, world wide, competitive player base, with prize support up to about $30,000. Now this doesn't compare to what chess masters can win but I find the similarities very interesting.
The thing in my mind that makes magic far more interesting and challenging than chess is that the game changes every 4 months. Based on some essential fundamentals the actual rules recieve a complete overhaul, and even top players that cannot adapt to the new format will find themselves sharing tables with the scrubs.
I think a real challenge for programmers would be able to make a program that could thrive in this type of environment. To me that would be true AI. Being able to actually LEARN and not brute force its way to a win would be an amazing accomplishment for AI programmers.
They did change the parameters. It is allowed under the rules, and common practice. If they ever stated "that they would not", please provide a citation.
Accurate, but irrelevant since Deep Blue had played in no previous matches. DB's precursors *had* played in matches, and those transcripts are public record. If Kasparov didn't have them it was because he didn't look.
The thing that GK complains so much about is that they refused to provide the evaluation logs. Big difference! The logs describe the *reasons* that DB played or rejected certain moves. Kasparov is no more entitled to them than any human player is to have his opponent sit down after the match and descript why he played each move. No professional player would ever give *or ask for* such a thing.
Frankly, I think this is why IBM disassembled Deep Blue and will never sponsor or play in another such match. Kasparov poisoned the well. The payoff for IBM is in the public relations, and for GK to accuse them of cheating seriously detracts from the PR value. And there's no way to disprove the charges. (BTW, the match jury *was* given the logs, and after examing them they cleared the Deep Blue team of any wrongdoing.)
You can't take the sky from me!