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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.
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. =)
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.
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.
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 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/
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.
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.