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."

Comments

Chessmaster 8000 always beats me as is...

[Anonymous Coward]

at least Chessmaster can't post on ./ how it beat me 5 times in a row.

Re:Chessmaster 8000 always beats me as is...

[Chessmaster 8000]

at least Chessmaster can't post on ./ how it beat me 5 times in a row.

Can't I?

I look forward to beating you five more times tomorrow night.

Re:Chessmaster 8000 always beats me as is...

[QQ2]

Allright this is the last straw
I've been beaten by this thing all through my life and I always took comfort that there was atleast one thing that I could achieve before the Chessmaster

getting a +5 funny at slashdot

Nooooooooooo damn you, now my failure is complete
/me runs out to grab large sword and commit harikiri

Interesting, but...

[TopShelf]

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.

Re:Interesting, but...

[DavidpFitz]

I agree with you. After studying AI as an undergrad for 4 years, I came to the conclusion that carrying out well defined tasks is not a subject matter for AI. Chess rules are extremely well defined, and as such all that is being carried out is a search - this is not AI.

Learning to understand English is altogether different -- Language has a very complex set of very loosely defined rules which change over time, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Understanding English is very much an AI task.

The problem is knowedge, and how it should be represented -- with Chess you just need a big calculator and present as much of the game (projected) as possible. There is no such way to do this with language... a much more complex representation with much more hueristic knowledge is required, and this is where AI starts coming in. Natural language processing is a very tricky field, one which I won't even pretend I understand, and in my opinion nobody quite does... Chomsky probably coming closest, but then again I'd disagree with him on many points!!

D.

Re:Interesting, but...

[beders]

The best chess players look for patterns, but through experience and insight can discard millions of possible moves and concentrate on the most effective and bring about a squence that forces their oppenent in a direction they don't want to go. Saying that I have no idea how to get a computer to do the same :)

Re:Interesting, but...

[ergonal]

Good chess players just create_suspense(x) before making a move, where x is the amount of suspense, and generally increases as the game develops. When this function finishes they make a random move based on the "ooh" and "aah"'s they receive when they touch different pieces. If there's no crowd they use the expression on their opponents face in place of this decision-making process. It's a lot like winning the lottery. These chess players aren't really THAT smart.

Re:Interesting, but...

[DavidpFitz]

Sure -- rational people understand that a person's has a hierarchical structure where a complex concept depend on a number of simple concepts. Without the lower, more simple concepts, the higher concepts have no meaning since they can't be understood.

So, knowledge is hierarchial only insofar that simple addition and subtraction pave the way for more complex algebra... knowing algebra without knowing addition and subtraction would give algebra no meaning.

However, this doesn't account for leaps of thought where entire planes of thinking are bypassed... and nor does it account for mad people (always a tricky one in AI) , especially mad geniuses!

chess != AI

[tigress]

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. =)

Re:chess != AI

[zutroy]

In a situation where there aren't predefined rules, how does a human react?

We judge what the situation most resembles from our experience, and we react accordingly. We act like a case-based learning AI program. We use heuristics to weight our decisions...we just call our heuristics "common sense."

Computers act more like humans, and humans act more like computers, than many people are comfortable to admit. Computers just don't have the mechanisms to experience as wide a variety of stimuli as us.

Take a look at the work of Douglas Hofsteader (sp?). His book, "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," shows relatively simple programs demonstrating surprisingly human-like behaviors.

The problem with your argument.

[nigel.selke]

Every time technology advances, the definition of what tasks can be said to require "true intelligence" changes. For example, before the advent of calculating machines, arithmetic was considered something that was uniquely human. Now, people dismiss computers' abilities to do lightning fast arithmetic, and, in fact, use it as a basis for putting down other abilities of computers/other high technology ("But that all comes down to number crunching. It's not true 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.

Re:The problem with your argument.

[Jugalator]

You make a good point -- in the end, regardless how advanced the AI is, it might all boil down to number crunching, just like it all boils down to chemical reactions in a brain.

Re:The problem with your argument.

[Kynde]

1) Make a computer with true free will. Let's see AI do something it wasn't originally designed to do because it wants to.

How would you measure that? Especially if you knew that in the it boiled down to number crunching with some entropy input. You do remember that the concept of free will is meaningful only subjectively, i.e. from one's own point of view.
Although it is widely held that among human kind if one has it then all do, but that does not apply to AI.


2) "True intelligence", at least on par with us, will happen when a computer does everything we do mentally, while having full articulate motor skills, and then takes it upon itself to create an AI that crunches numbers better than it does, beats itself at chess, etc.

Bollocks, the earlier poster said it well. We're just drawing the line further and further, mostly because what we're after is that "well, err, when they're like us" while all along we're not quite sure what that means.

Moreover, the planes is infested with actual human beings that would fail on either of those.

Besides both of your points there are unscientific, neither of which can be measured in any way. That's all there really is to it though. Milestones. Wether a person qualifies that as AI is subjective to the definition of AI, for which here in /. I'm guessing are a myriad of different interpretations.

There are a number of good well defined tests that we can put the AI through, every one of those passed is significant. Especially the forementioned arithmetics and chess should NOT be forgotten, because they indeed were once held high.

Re:The problem with your argument.

[platypus]

To add another example. Richard Feynman writes in one of his books about how he listened to a conversation between to students of mathematics(at MIT or so) where one tried to explain some mathematical concept to the other.
Feynman described that after a long while and much intense explaining, finally the other student "got it", and said something along the lines of "Oh! YES, THAT'S TRIVIAL!"
Feynman goes on to make fun of mathematicians by proposing that mathematicians only understand trivial problems, because anything they have already understood is declared trivial by them.

This is a bit extreme, but it decribes exactly the notion some AI critics seem to have when judging AI advances.

Re:The problem with your argument.

[slimak]

Haven't you been watching any scifi movies in the past couple of decades? As I have, I can tell you that this is a very bad idea. Once the computers can do things we don't indend, the will either

1) attempt to destroy us
2) enslave us
3) sell us on ebay

we have seen time and time again that AI is pure evil and no good can come of it.

I really wish I could believe stuff like this-

[Ieshan]

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.

To test a powerful computer, play an ancient game

[igomaniac]

The game of Go has proven to be incredibly hard to program, and is a much better indication of where artificial intelligence is today than the game of Chess.

This article gives an introduction to the problems involved in getting computers to play Go:

http://www.ishipress.com/times-go.htm

Re:Ho-hum

[po8]

Nobody got outraged when that new-fangled mechanical auto-mobile contraption started to outpace the world's fastest human runners.

Allow me to recommend to you the legend of John Henry. About the time period you mention, too. I always mention this story in the Intro AI class I teach.

Bollocks

[schnitzi]

I was fairly engaged with this article (despite a little too much anthropomorphising of the results of deep computations) until the ridiculous conclusions at the end!

Yeah, every chess program has a huge openings library to consult with, while a man has none.

Baloney. A man is allowed to memorize as many openings as he wants, just as the computer has "memorized" them.

Having found no other way to make the program good at endgame, program developers started feeding them databases of common endgames.

Again, so? Humans are allowed to memorize as much endgame stuff as they want. Why should computers be disallowed this?

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.

Awwww... Why the hell not? Human brains aren't single processor; why should computer opponents have to be?

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.

The same fallacy, repeated over and over again. The human doesn't have none, he has as many as he cares to remember.

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.

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.

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.

So, the humans are cheaters then, because they capitalized on computer blunders?

Re:computer can't handle non-computable problems

[cyco_penguin]

Godel's theorem says nothing about the ability to understand Godel's theorem. It simply states that in any formal system (FS) sufficiently powerful to support Peano Arithmetic, there are theorems about FS which can be expressed in FS, but cannot be shown to be true or false (are undecidable) within the rules of FS. I.e. unanswerable questions may be asked of any sufficiently interesting system.

Quite what bearing this has on the ability to "understand" such a system is beyond me. Prove God exists. Prove God does not exist. Can't do either? Oh well, you're obviously not intelligent then.

So what is considered AI?

[Bombula]

It's one thing to know what something isn't; it's quite another to know what it is. I think it's clear that running a search and performing arithmetic are functions to simple to have emergent properties resembling intelligence. So then what properties would have to emerge? What are the properties of intelligence?

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.

The flaw of being perfect

[csritchie]

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 ;)