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Chess Championship: Humans vs. Computer
An anonymous reader writes "X-bit labs has posted very interesting editorial called "Chess Championship: Humans vs. Computer".
During the last 10 years computers penetrated into various spheres of human life. In this article guys try to find out how well computers can
play chess and if it would be correct to say that artificial intelligence is superior to human mind. Interesting read."
at least Chessmaster can't post on ./ how it beat me 5 times in a row.
I don't know if chess playing really qualifies as AI. The game gets broken down numerically such that the computer's job is just to crunch through the myriad possible moves and select the best one. All the intelligence goes into the algorithm that rates various positions, and the calculation scheme by which possibilities are evaluated, which are the human inputs. It just sounds like too narrowly focused a task to be considered AI.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The game of Chess is not a measure of intelligence. It's a measure of mathematics and memory. A computer is no smarter if it's able to play chess than one that isn't.
The reason for this is that Chess is a game where the rules are strictly defined. For each move, there can only be a limited - and known - number of outcomes. This reduces the entire game to a matter of mathematics and statistics.
No, the real test of intelligence would be for a computer to react to and handle a situation where the rules are NOT predefined - such as a real world scenario.
When a computer is able to take a limited number of inputs and make a judgement based on the (possibly) inaccurate and (definitely) insufficient data available, you can start talking about intelligence. Still, even then you're not talking about true intelligence. AND, for that matter, such programs do exist - they're called expert systems.
No, what I'm prepared to call intelligence is a program that not only is able to make a judgement based on possibly bad data, but is also prepared to admit that it made a mistake and learn from those mistakes. That would, in my opinion, be a truly intelligent program.
After all, assuming it's able to do that, it'd certainly be a lot more intelligent than a lot of humans I know. =)
The First "Cyborg Championship"?
Meanwhile, Garry Kasparov has arranged for an exhibition match with 23 year old GM Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria for June in which both players will have an (identical) laptop computer that they may consult during the games. The laptops will have databases preloaded by each player (therefore containing their own analysis and selections), as well as a tactical engine. Each game of the 6 game match will last only one hour, meaning that a large part of the strategy will be how much time spend on the computer! A number of analysts are calling this the "First 21st Century World championship" although of course it's only an exhibition. (http://www.uschess.org/clife/issue47/buzz.html)
It's from 1997, but I think they're right. The future does seem to be moving in that direction.
I recall reading an interview with former world chapion karpov who said that when he was learning chess, his teacher said that one day it would all be computers. One of the other students said, "So why are we bothering to do this then?" and the coach replied, "My computer will beat your computer." or something like that. Pretty soon it'll all be down to which computer is better and which person can better control it. I'm sorry I can't better quote the interview. It was in the ChessLife about the Karpov v. Kasparov x3d match in Times Square in case anyone has it.
It's been said before, but before we talk about computers becoming superior to the human mind, how about creating an AI that's *equal* to the human mind?
In other words, there's no point in talking about the future where computers rule supreme etc. if we still have no way for a computer to recognize, say, a table from a picture of a table if it does not comply with a series of previously-specified standards. I know it's a horrible analogy but jeez, it's 3:18 AM.
...Which reminds me. Why am I still up? *sighs* Damn you, caffeine.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - G.B. Shaw
lim --> ***
That's mathematical notation for the current AI situation: "The stars are the limit."
Chess-playing is not the definitive measure of man or machine. Rather, thinking is.
AI as a Whole has got a lot of Unified AI Systems going -- major endeavors racing into the Future towards the Technological Singularity.
The AI textbook AI4U may be ahead of its time in presenting machine intelligence, so future generations are left with the high-philosophy AI4Udex to delve into the deepest possible study of the now unstoppable Artificial Intelligence.
Of course, you (and they) could be right about it. But it's interesting to note that chess is another prime example of this. Computers became extremely good at number crunching and large-scale analysis, and people shrugged it off. "A computer would never be able to compete with competent chess player, and could certainly never compete with a Grandmaster. Chess requires true human intelligence." 20 years later, a computer tied with the reigning Chess Champion. Now - Chess doesn't really require true intelligence, it all boils down to number crunching.
The problem is, where do we draw the line? As computers start adding more and more to their lists of abilities, especially in areas such as pattern recognition and expert systems, are we going to claim that those things don't require intelligence, and can also all be brought down to number crunching? To me, it seems like a form of denial. Instead of clinging to the old ways, why not recognize that computers might just be better at a lot of things that we previously thought were "human-only" areas of skill, and adapt accordingly.We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop
This is such a lousy article, the list of supposed "cheating" by the computer at the end is laughable. Does a calculator cheat because it calculates its answers in a different way than humans do? Come on!
...if it would be correct to say that artificial intelligence is superior to human mind. Seeing as how it was our mind that created AI, somehow I just don't think so.
You show me AI that takes it upon itself to create it's own AI that outperforms itself, then I'll concede. That's the mark of intelligence: having the capacity to create something more capable than yourself, and not only make it, but think it up.
--
Power to the Peaceful
I think it was Kasparov who said: "It's not about who is better(playing chess, humans or computers), it's about us not making mistakes."
How about a distributed chess programm, just like seti..???
Of course against distributed human thinking power, everybody can suggest the next move. The move that is suggested most often within a certain period of time, will be the next move.
10.000 computers vs. 10.000 human minds. Could be interesting.
When talking bout comparison between human and computer in posting on /., we all apriory have no chances. Especially when /. itself will post on /. :)
I like reading about breakthroughs such as the machine that taught itself to fly (at first, it cheated), but in terms of intelligence it's something any bird brain is capable of.
AI superior to human intelligence? Yes, as soon as AI comes up with an idea for improved AI. So far AI isn't as evolved as that though.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I hate it when people compare AI and human chess players and say the following three things:
a) The computer cheats because it can evaluate more moves
b) The computer cheats because it has "traps" and "100% win situations" programmed in
c) The computer cheats because it has access to previous human games and can "guess" a player's strategy
This might be true, but most grandmaster chess players have played thousands upon thousands of hours of chess. They can immediately rule out half the moves on the board as "stupid" or "unhelpful", and they themselves come with the special knowledge of having seen many, many board situations and having worked out their solutions.
Chess is an interesting game because it is on the scale of infiniately complex.
Computers also have a serious disadvantage: the players they play against are not computers, and therefore do not evaluate moves with the same algorithms. For instance, when Deep X makes his check he says, "I'm going to do this... and then... Kasparov might do that... and I might do this... and Kasparov might do that..." - all the while substituting in what he believes are probable moves for Kasparov based on his own algorithm. This may be disadvantageous because Kasparov may analyze a situation from a different perspective - and while this is a factor in EVERY chess game (human vs. computer or human vs. human) - it is important to note that the computer does not have the priviledge of analyzing the situation from these distinctly human perspectives.
Chess playing software is an example of an expert system, not a true AI system.
This article gives an introduction to the problems involved in getting computers to play Go:
http://www.ishipress.com/times-go.htm
The interactive way to Go -- http://www.playgo.to/iwtg/en/
Are there any plans regarding a chess championship for machines only?
http://www.spareprojects.nl
Well it certainly looked like a reasonable well
written article. But at the last page the writer
suddenly goes into second gear or something. Calling the chess programms 'cheaters'. Sigh, you
have this kind of thing all the time on usenet.
Very sour losers those humans, thankfully computers do not whine.
-- Last page is below:
So, chess programs are based on a simple and rather slow algorithm. How do they manage to beat human grandmasters? What are the tricks of a chess cheater?
A chess cheat has an openings note in his left pocket with trap variants marked red.
Yeah, every chess program has a huge openings library to consult with, while a man has none. I might divide the human memory into internal and external. A paper sheet (a book) is a kind of CD, while human eyes are not far from CD-ROM heads. Thus, a man is not only deprived of some part of his memory, but of a specialized part. This is all right when humans compete with each other, but not fair when two kinds of intelligence are involved.
There is an endgames book in the other pocket of the chess cheater.
Having found no other way to make the program good at endgame, program developers started feeding them databases of common endgames. Without this, the program would be at a loss even in a simplest pawn endgame. That's the reason for chess programs being much larger today than before - they take whole CDs. It turns out man plays against his own knowledge base rather than against an AI. This is good for training young chess players, but we can't call it an achievement of AI.
Cheaters seldom work alone
The above-described matches were played between a man and a multi-processor machine. The processors were prompting to each other and exchanging ideas. This doesn't seem fair. You might go and load a huge chess program into all Internet-connected computers and make it play against a single human. Wouldn't that be right? A man must play against his own desktop PC.
Cheaters catch the opponents
Cheaters like to let their opponent win, grow heated and then beat him. Chess programs also may be tweaked during a match. The technicians change program settings and as a result create a completely different chess player. I wonder if they would be happy to suddenly get Kramnik as an opponent instead of Kasparov, with whom they were preparing to play.
The chess cheater has another chessboard under the table to check a few variants.
Chess programs have a lot of memory at hand. It's like they have a million of chessboards to make moves on. And the human has none. If I were Kasparov or Kramnik, I would come to the match against the computer with my own board and played all variants on it. The PC can't see, you know. Who said you can't touch the pieces when playing against the machine? There is no such rule.
It's like you play "blind" chess against a cheater. You are trying to figure it all out with closed eyes, while the cheater sees everything.
Cheaters win from blunders.
All the games the computer won in the above-described matches were won due to blunders of the human opponents. They blundered everything: a piece, a checkmate, a draw, an opening. The cheater can't win without that.
I'm much more intrigued by developments in artificial creativity - poems, musical compositions, jokes, stories; where the rules governing the construction of these works are much more elusive. When a computer-generated novel wins the Booker Prize we'll have passed a signficant threshold.
Or to come back to the chess comparison - if a computer programme which adopted a human approach to chess playing, eg calculating no more than three or four moves ahead rather than nine or ten, evaluating a dozen potential decision branches rather than thousands, beat a human grand master - that would be a more significant advance in AI.
It would be like building a human-shaped robot which was able to out-run (not just outpace) a person, rather building a mechanical device which gets there by adopting an entirely different paradigm: wheels, not legs; brute force chess move evaluation, not (largely) intuitive leaps.
a world in progress...
Just think of the world's first conscious, intelligent computer claiming that we can't possibly be conscious because we're merely the products of neurons firing.
20 years ago it was assumed we would have computers find crimes before they happened as well as identify potential trouble teenagers before they enter highschool. It was assumed computers could do this because they could look at such complex patterns automatically and make decisions based on AI for us.
Turns out humans are still making the decisions. Computers only give information. A computer can not make business decisions for businesses but can display in a cute pie chart in a spreadsheet raw data for them.
Ai is not artificial intelligence but programmer intelligence. The programmer makes the decisions and not the computer. It just executes them really fast. Until computers can come up with their own thought patterns I say they are not really that intelligent.
http://saveie6.com/
I've been busy with computer chess for a few years and I can tell you it's no AI, at least from academic point of view. It's yet a very interesting problem and lots of academic works are done round the world related to this matter (even PhD thesis...). Basically you do a tree/graph search (chess search is something in between as you have a tree with some memory from past levels of the search on the same tree). Also there are some very well-definded knowledge from the opening (and possibly endings) and that's all! The greatest effort is to write a good static positional evaluation function which is rather tricky and there are lots of research on adjusting the coefficients of such an evaluation function using Genetic Algorithms or other (more) advanced optimization methods. All in all you don't need to be an AI expert to write a good chess program and it's not comparabale to other applications like NLP. Tree/Graph search is used in many applications from databases to CAD tools and we don't call them AI applications, so why should a chess program be an AI application? Just because human being does chess too can not signify that as human being deos simple math too but nobody calls a calculator an intelligent machine! At least GO could be a better example as the programs do not just run a simple search (from theoritical standpoint) but should take into account elements of pattern recognition.
Computers have been doing all that and more, for more than the last twenty years...they're just smart enough to keep their yap shut about it. You humans are so eager to talk about yourselves.
Oh, and by the way, you've been identified as a trouble maker and poor speller, since...hum...the records say, March 18,1987.
At best it's only Simulated Intellegence and as long as humans program them, computers playing chess or modeling atmospherics, there is only a much faster completion of the results. Some human had to plan the operation and program, not a computer. As long as this is the scenario a computer is only simulating intellegence and is not superior to a human mind. It only appears to be to the lesser brethern.
If you think computers should play better go (and know what you talk of), consider helping Gnu Go
A program implemented to beat a 'Go' master would be more of an example of real, hard intellect. AI developers seem to have an unwholesome obsession with 'minimax' and fundamentally inefficient binary search algorithms - maybe if someone adequately defined a logical abstract for intelligence, we wouldn't be continually bombarded with these borish advances in... Chess...
Hey relax fella, you need a rest, guy.
... it's the only weapon we have against the machines... seriously... would unplugging it count as "cheating?"
Jeremy Logan's Website.
Say I put my brain in a robot body, and there's a war: robots versus humans. What side am I on?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Baloney. A man is allowed to memorize as many openings as he wants, just as the computer has "memorized" them.
Again, so? Humans are allowed to memorize as much endgame stuff as they want. Why should computers be disallowed this?
Awwww... Why the hell not? Human brains aren't single processor; why should computer opponents have to be?
The same fallacy, repeated over and over again. The human doesn't have none, he has as many as he cares to remember.
And if I were on the computer team, I'd let you. Knock yourself out! Go ahead and fiddle with your chessboard when you could be considering countless more positions in your head.
So, the humans are cheaters then, because they capitalized on computer blunders?
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
- like understanding Godel Theorems
- Goodstein theorem
as explained here by Roger Penrose:
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/plec
so there is no future for computable Artificial Intelligence.
btw gravity has non-computable problems, so the universe in non-computable, so understanding is non-computable.
Fascinating site - thanks. I guess the thing I hadn't considered was human insecurity. In some ways, on a purely technical level, a machine outworking / outrunning / outcalculating a person is no big deal - if anything a tribute to human ingenuity.
On the other hand if that machine is going to take away your livelihood (or, perhaps in the case of chess, your sense of superiority) it's a lot bigger deal.
a world in progress...
CHess is just simple game on small 8x8 board with very simple rules, without random events at all. Sure, you can say how fantastic game it is, how long history it has, etc, etc. But truth is there are many other more complex games, with bigger game tree, and if you add random events (like in backgammon)...
It's funny that people think playing such simple game is proof that computer can think. And yes, I am pro-AI person.
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
Chess is won by a computer using brute force... now, when a 9dan Go player is beat by a computer, then i'll believe computers are more intelligent than humans. Stupid chess people....
-SaNo
Is it not true that in the end we are all just a bunch of particles interacting in an organized manner(i.e. not chaotic) such that we consider it to be intelligent. On the small scale of things our intelligence is just a complex series of electrical charges being directed by our particles. This in theory means that if we had a better understanding of the human brain, then a computer could essentially do anything a human can. Everything eventually comes down to math, even our intelligence, whether you want to admit it or not.Just because humans aren't smart enough to understand their own brains yet or construct super fast computers doesn't mean you should go making claims that computers are dumb and don't have human capabilities. Computers have feelings too. On a side note, lizards are considered intelligent life, try making a lizard play chess.
A chess playing computer proves nothing -- chess is the perfect game for a computer: Small board, each piece has very limited and strictly defined movements. At any given moment, the computer can quickly compute every possible move and counter-move.
And in fact, that's what human chess players do. Look at the world's greatest chess players -- the "Grand Masters". When they play against each other, most of their matches end in a draw. That's because there are no trick plays or suprise moves in chess, and the match is almost always decided by who screws up first.
In my admittedly ignorant view, intelligence largely boils down to three closely related things:
1. Noise filtration.
Humans and animals - even simple ones - can prioritize what sensory input to process. This is how we pick objects out of the background visually, sonically, and - in humans - abstractly from conceptual landscapes.
2. Pattern recognition.
Correctly identifying patterns within chaotic data streams are where biological computers (brains) excel, thanks probably to massively parallel processing and phenomenally well designed algorithms courtesy of natural selection. Listening to one person's voice in a crowd requires both (a) ignoring all other sound, and (b)correctly identifying and processing the relevant data coming in, including information about context. Current Voice Recognition technology, for example, is poor despite massive number crunching because algorithms for noise filtering and pattern recognition are crude. Note also that pattern recognition is 4-dimensional: we recognize things in motion, not just standing still (read "behavior").
3. Information inference.
Current software doens't allow computers to handle a lack of data very well. If information is missing, brains fill in the gaps and make inferences efficiently and effectively. Sometimes this goes wrong, as when you mistakenly think you see something out of the corner of your eye. But mostly we get this right, hence the brain's accurate and effortless construction of motion from still frames flashed 24 times per second on a movie screen.
A simple test of these qualifiers is anticipation. When software can filter noise, recognize patterns, and infer information well enough to demonstrate the faculty of anticipation, then we will be making steps towards genuine AI.
A-Bomb
Kasparov takes the NYT log postings into account in his recent post. He cites Elo (chess rating) numbers by Ken Thompson (an old school computer chess guy) derived by extrapolating numbers generated by setting a computer program against itself with differing search depths, "world championship"[1] level performance would require 1 billion nodes (moves) per second. Interestingly, "one billion nodes/sec on a single chip" is possible with todays 0.13 micron process, while "a trillion nodes/sec machine is actually possible today" according to one of Feng-Hsiung Hsu (Deep Blue hardware designer).[2]
0 .html?804278037510812]
_____________
[1]Kasparov notes also that the chess performance ranking numbers that Ken Thompson derived were asymptotic(?); "which flattens at the top end" . From Garry Kasparov on Chess Computers (22.01.2003) [ONLINE][http://www.worldchessrating.com/52162987
[2](Note: The "one of Deep Blue's two programmers." citation is incorrect... the followup post clarifies the error.)
Same holds for Awari, an ancient African game. The first computer program being able to play it at all is less than a year old. Try playing it yourself here.
I think this still does not qualify as AI, though.
If you want to impress me, write a chess engine that can "learn" and grow from a novice player into a grandmaster. Where is the intelligence in crunching numbers from an existing database (taken from humans btw)?
But while everyone is bitiching and moaning about what is AI and what isnt with regards to chess....it would seem to me that the computer for all its elegance at winning and losing at chess has performed better and better as a direct result of the improvements of its human based programming to better take advantage of its own past failings....
I was beginning to wonder if anybody was going to mention Go. I personally feel that Go is a much better game to judge computer AI by because it requires more creativity. You can't win at go by reading through every possible combination - there are just too many of them. A player must be creative and intuitive as well as technically minded and able to read through variations several moves ahead.
Just to put things into perspective: This article is about the debate over whether computer chess is really on the level of the Grand Masters yet or not. In the Go world, this question is absurd. A reasonably strong professional (not even necessarily a proven title holder) can give a handicap of well over 9 stones (this is approximately equivalent to a 9 rank difference in strength - an enourmous difference in Go) to the leading computer go programs, and demolish everything on the board.
That's the thing, eventually the computer will be able to go through every combination, and be the best Go player in the world.
Right the computer in the best tic-tac-toe, and checkers player in the world. Soon, it will be the best chess player in the world. One day maybe before I die, it will be the best Go player in the world.
But all I want is a good computer bridge player.
Er - Awari has been solved and it's a win for the first player. A computer has been written to play this.
Also, I used to play Awari against my computer back in the 1980s.
Story: My grandfather was an excellent checkers player, could beat everyone in the county. One day a championship checker player came to town and played my grandfather.
They started playing, after my grandfather made one wrong move, the man said "you're beat", and he was. He played 'by numbers' according to my grandfather. My grandfather said he had no chance.
Now who is the better checkers player. Obviously not my grandfather it was the other man.
But if you changed the rules slighty where the man could no longer use 'numbers', my grandfather might have been able to win at this new version of checkers.
My point is this, the man didn't show any intelligent by beating my grandfather other than having a good memory. And we all know computers have a great memory.
On another note,
I believe Bobby Fisher wanted to randomize the back row of pieces in chess, because people were not playing/thinking chess but rather memorizing moves.
This sort of article has been done to death. Sweet Jesus!
Human: "Hello, I can use my intuition to pick out the most sound moves without analyzing the entire set of possible moves"
Computer: "Me fast. Me can analyze them all."
End of story.
- A real programmer uses $ cat > a.out
Can't we all just get along? ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
If we had a computer much faster than deep blue, we could use neural network structures, like those available in C++. The program's universe is the game, the input and output being win/lose and board status. It knows the moves.
Pit two against eachother, put them in a closet, come back in a week. Now they need new opponents, or else their strategies will be incredibly dull. Rense, repeat.
When it's finally over, you will have a few superb true-AIist Chess players who may still lose to the world's best, but only for so many games.
By true AIish I mean that there is no free will, but the computer developed all the stragies by itself.
I used to think getting a hot chick was a matter of uniquely human qualities too, but as I grow older and wiser it's more & more obvious that it's ultimately just a matter of number crunching.
Don't make me haul out Rick Okasek, Lyle Lovett, and Billy Joel as proof.
-Styopa
OK, a random comment in another post got me to
thinking. Keep in mind that I'm not much of a chess player, nor much up on chess programming. (but I used to play Go decently)
What if we implemented extensive sorting algorithms in a chess computer? Start by picking the two most recently moved pieces (each side's most recent, that is) and getting rid of all moves that don't pertain to that situation. Then consider the next most important pieces (perhaps looking at a three move history?) and further winnow the possible moves down to maybe a dozen or so. Then read not a thousand or ten thousand situations, but a dozen for one move, and then repeat. Maybe apply a scoring system to see if we move further ahead than behind, and toss out more situations.
We might end up with a computer that spent more of its time sorting than calculating, but only had to play through a hundred moves total in five or ten positions. This strikes me as being much closer to how humans view a game. Would we call it intelligent?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Chess programs have always been limited by the fact they try to find the most logical move; that leads to the most logical sequence for the current board position.
;)
They are hardly cheaters.
True they capitalize on mistakes, but if you play Fritz, or Chessmaster on the most diffuclt setting, even a relative novice can make it to move 20. The computer will try to read your opening and play "book" against it.
Whereas if you were to play Kasparov as a relative
novice, I would wager the game would be over, or at the very least you would be in a position that could not be won, by move 15 or so.
If a human sees you make a move that isn't the best possible move, they can switch their whole strategy to be more aggressive. Computers play the board not the person.
So far programs treat Kasparov and a relative novice the same. Knowing no difference aside from how the game develops.
A perfect thing can only make the perfect choice.
Luckily we aren't limited by such trivialites
That's the thing, eventually the computer will be able to go through every combination, and be the best Go player in the world.
This is not true - Go has too much depth to be effectively searched beyond just a few moves. The first 14 moves of Go have more than 200^14 possibilities. Go games take many many more moves than that to complete.
The second problem is that an effective searching algorithm is only the first step. The really hard part is trying to come up with an analysis function based on pattern matching. There are no weights for different pieces, some more important than others. Each stone is worth the same. It's the arrangement of stones which counts - something really hard to describe as a heuristic.
Read the grandparent's linked article - it explains all this a lot better than I can...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
All of this is true UNLESS we build a quantum computer. Than this computer can evaluate all games and become a perfect player.
You played Awari on an Atari?
First posts are lame. Get back to your revision.
No, it can't. It'd never be able to evaluate, say a Go game on a board 100000000x100000000. There isn't enough matter on earth for the calculation. You NEED to abstract and have a strategy with Go. Whether you believe everything can be solved by brute force is simply irrelevant. Only AI can take shortcuts and make the imposible happen. Yes, organization and abstraction, in a word, inteligence beats brute force, at least in our finite universe.
unfinished: (adj.)
Let me start by saying that all I know about real AI I learned by watching various movies -- that is to say, not much. But the author of this article made some startling assertions and seemed almost to apologizing for the "stupid humans" who should have won each and every game.
Two main thoughts -- first, Deep Blue and the other chess computers should not be viewed as computer triumphing over man, rather they are a triumph of human-as-toolmaker over human-as-gameplayer. This is view espoused by the creator of Deep Blue in his excellent book "Behind Deep Blue".
This brings me to my second point -- since when has taking advantage of a blunder been cheating in chess? As a strong amateur, I can tell you every chess game I have ever played -- from the most lopsided slaughter to the most closer positional game -- was decided by a blunder on either my part or the part of my opponent. What changes is the sophistication of the blunder being made. A begining player will give away material with abandon, a GM will blunder away a tempo (tempo = the initiative for 1 turn). Blunders lose games. Period. The one who blunders last loses. Taken to an extreme, this author seems to argue that whenever a player makes a bad mistake, the computer should pat them on the head, and say "Dearie, are you suuurreee about that move? Why don't you go ahead and just try that one again."
A couple of last points -- in "Behind Deep Blue" Feng-Hsiung Hsu gives a meticulous description of the games between Gary K. and Deep B. -- including the "drawn" second game that Gary resigned. According to Hsu, the drawing variation wasn't discovered until much later that night, and was certainly by no means an obvious continuation. Hsu also discussed several of the glitches in the system in great detail -- including their multi-year battle with the draw repetion detector -- that led to some of Deep Blue's odd failings at various points. The book, by the way, was awesome and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in these issues.
Finally a few meta-chessical thoughts: the great beauty of chess is that you sit down -- one entity on either side -- and either win or lose. There can be no excuses. No fluke bounces, no I-lost-it-in-the-sun. I think for chess players the great thrill is the battle between two minds taking place in complete equality of opportunity. To take away from human-as-toolmaker simply because you don't like the outcome seems to me to diminish us all. In addition, as several other have pointed out, shear computing power will never win. Only after the Deep Blue team began paring away poor moves and focusing more deeply on moves that appear good, did the computer really achieve its full strength. I guarantee you that Kasparov knows every opening he plays at least as well as *any* opening theory (or endgame, for that matter) book in existence. Only when the computer developed the ability to "think" -- that is to evaluate which moves deserve more study -- that man-as-toolmaker could actually win.
I'd like to see that silly computer recognize my face, my 3 month old baby can do that...
Ok this is just absurd. Humans could never play a game on a board of 100000000x100000000. First of all the board would be way to big, second the number of stones needed to finish the game would be huge, and lastly the time to finish it would be astronomical. Can you imagine the number of Ko threats you would have in the mid-game? To be fair the current game is really 19x19. Still the prospect for using brute force on Go is absurd at this point. I can remeber a comment from one of the Deep blue designers was "no way" when he was asked if he would work on Go next. I don't think we should say Go can never be solved, it just seems unlikely at this point. Any way if chess is solved I don't really think this really detracts from the enjoyment of the game. Could someone really memorize the entire solution? Nope.
Imagine that a chess program is developed that can beat any human opponent. Not such a far-fetched situation. Now imagine this scenario: Human faces computer in a convention hall. In front of a large crowd, computer resoundingly thrashes human in each match. The computer is surely more intelligent than any human, everyone declares. Then the fire alarm goes off. People run for the exits as the hall fills with smoke and fire. The computer just sits there waiting for its opponent's next move. Now who's smart?
Teamwork. Man creates tools to help reach goals. As time moves along, those tools get more complicated. We started with rocks and clubs and sticks, moved to bows and arrows in order to hunt, and things continue to develop. The tools change our world. (Where would we be without the wheel? The cotton gin? Combustion engines? Electricity?) The ability to play chess doesn't make a computer intelligent - but the ability to create a computer that plays top notch chess means that our tools have developed another step.
Ok, my post was absurd in the sense that I greatly exagerated, but the point is was trying to make a point. Some people do not grasp the inmensity of the memory that would be required to traverse some trees. They just think of what...a "larger" tree? By abstracting better computer can beat any tree, they fail to realize not enough energy and matter exists in the universe to do such calculation, while two kilograms of grey mass that take hamburgers as power supplies can outsmart painlessly. I think this issue along brings a lot of attention of how smart the human brain is, and smartness is what AI should be.
unfinished: (adj.)
This is not AI really. It is just simple number crunching using programs that HUMANS had to write. Basically its just using human intelligence with some fast number crunching.
Chess playing is a form of AI.
People object that chess programs "just search". Well, don't humans do the same? When we have a problem, we look at all of the possibilities and evaluate what we think is the best move for us. Isn't this what Minimax is all about, to an abstracted level? So what if computers are "calculating"? We calculate too, using neurons that fire with very deterministic chain reactions of chemicals in our brains. Our minds are simply the movements of sodium and potassium ions, with the help of ATP, calcium, neurotransmitters, etc. Where is the "intelligence" in that? At what point does our parallel "data-processing" turn into subject?
People also complain that the Chess heuristics are all programmed by humans, and therefore not really AI. What people don't realize is that we are preprogrammed, too. We have rules that guide how we work in nature. We don't have to learn how to see, how to move our hands, how to recognize faces (we can learn faces, but we have the ability to recognize faces inborn). Even the ability to speak languages is, to some extent, an inborn ability. In chess, learning is limited during the actual play of the game. You can use your mistakes in one game to improve your overall play for future games, but you don't usually apply such knowledge in the current game itself (unless you are a rank beginner and forget how the knight moves, for instance). So, computer programs are legitimized in not always including learning algorithms for current games.
AI is simply a designation for the field of trying to model various aspects of the human mind, whether it be learning, emotions, language, game-playing, recognition, or "common sense" heuristics. Even something as simple as a Finite State Machine could be considered an AI agent; whether it is an accurate, flexible, or complex model is an entirely different issue from whether it is AI at all.
If a computer puts up the appearence of intelligence, for all intents and purposes, it is intelligent, and if it seems dumb, it is dumb, in the context of whatever you're testing. A chess program has zilch intelligence for anything besides chess, much like a savant that can calculate primes sometimes even without the know-how of basic arithmetic. The human brain is, at the current state, too complicated to model on a holistic level. I think everyone in the AI field would agree. So, why pompously and snobbishly deride computer chess as "un-AI" while claiming that (for example) "Only Learning is AI"? If someone has Retrograde Amnesia, does that mean that the person is unintelligent? No! AI covers a vast range of sub-fields, and only one of them is AI.
Such irE
In my oppion the answer to the question proposed by this article is that a computer is supperior to a human mind like an idiot savant is supperior to and average human bieng.
They both are able to achieve feats that are almost unheard of by average human biengs, yet for some reason they still can't see the full picture.
Reminds me of how back in the 80's psychiatrists were asked to determine between an AI program an a Scheziphrenzic patient. It ended up that the psychiatrists couldn't deterimine between the two and the conclusion was that while a normal mind is hard to emulate, a defective mind is very easy to emulate.
I just think the two are related. Perhaps we need more psychiatrists doing AI to get the sick computers to act normal?
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Remove a chess engine's opening book and their ability to brute force fifteen moves ahead is gone.
I wonder how chess engines would fair with Fischer Random Chess (back row pieces are shuffled allowing 960 different starting positions).