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Man Vs Machine In Chess - Who Is Winning?
FFriedel writes "In a few weeks, the world's strongest player Garry Kasparov will take
on X3D Fritz in a high-profile man-machine
chess match. Who is the statistical favourite? Since computers have been steadily
improving and are now holding their own against the very strongest human players,
one would think it may be Fritz. Not necessarily, says statistician Jeff Sonas,
who doesn't believe computers will inevitably surpass the top humans, and presents empirical evidence to support his claim as part of a series of articles for ChessBase."
"brethren," eh?
:)
Hypocrite
I consider it's still humans competing with other humans playing chess. On one hand we have a chess-master using all the power of his brain, on the other some computer people using a high-powered computer.
When a computer can learn to play chess by itself and then beat the top players, then we have something to look at.
It just seems like humans couldn't make chess software that was better than a human itself
And it just seems to me that humans couldn't make motor vehicles that run faster than a human itself...
The unofficial
I notice that the question is "Man vs. Machine". You completely ignore the hundreds of grandmaster chess players that happen to be female.
Name a few.
Any in the top ten?
Didn't think so.
More importantly, the article mentions a match against Kasparov, most certainly a male. Thus, although we can philosophically ponder the bigger question of "human vs machine", the title has no sexism involved, without even resorting to a discussion on the use of the masculine neutral in English.
It is simply naive to say computers will never be able to outdo human thought, such as that required for chess or other logic/pattern-recognition based tasks. This is analogous to 19th century Royal Society scientists claiming one could never escape the Earth's gravity into space and beyond (and providing "proof," mind you). But I digress. Chess is not so much about logic and thought (in the normal sense) as it is for pattern recognition and "looking ahead." The best chess players in the world have nearly memorized all the possible combinations in all the possible scenarios, contrary to popular belief that their abilities are innate. I don't know if software has evolved enough to beat him this time around, but if the second math was any indication, my money's on the machine.
A blog like any other.
If you are talking about solving a chess position using a distributed network of computers (like seti@home), this would not work incredibly well. The problem would be communication between the nodes of the network. Chess is not a problem that can be solved completely in parallel, the different parts of the problem tree are dependent on other parts...they would need to communicate very efficiently for a system like this to work. On the internet, the response time between nodes is just too high for the system to work efficiently past one or two ply into the tree.
from the article:
"The red line is Garry Kasparov's rating over time, and the blue line is the rating of the top computers on the SSDF list. The blue line is creeping closer and closer to the red line. It seems just on the verge of crossing over. "
But then, further, down, he writes:
"Although computers obviously must be improving in recent years, the strongest humans seem to also be improving at about the same rate."
These two statements contradict each other, don't they? Either computers are improving faster than grand-masters, meaning the graph and its extraploations are true; or, computers and grand-masters are improving at the same rate, which would mean the percentage of human wins and draws would be generally the same as in previous years (something not indicated by the second graphic in the article)?
the coolest club on
Its easy to claim that Deep Blue is superiour, because it was dismantled, and we will never see it face off against another computer. IBM ran away scared after thier single (lucky) victory. Speed alone does not a chess god make. Fritz has far superiour positional analysis capabilities when compared to Deep Blue.
According to p. 45 of Russel & Norvig's AI book, a look up table for the game of chess (i.e. if you mapped every achievable permutation of chess pieces on a board) you would have 10^150 entries. Unfortunately, there are only 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. Even with excellent heuristics, I think these numbers show that a computer that capable of playing perfect chess will not be built in the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, the fastest airplane ever built is still the SR-71A made in the 1960's. That doesn't mean aircraft technology has come to a standstill. It just means outrunning the SR-71A hasn't been a priority of aircraft builders since then. If they wanted to expend the resources to make a faster plane today, they could do it.
Deep Blue II was the SR-71A of chess computers. What's come afterwards has been a lot more economical and practical, but hasn't tried to match it in pure performance, and hasn't done so.
. Kasparov plays very emotional games
I'm not sure what an 'emotional' chess move looks like. I can say this, kasparov's ELO has been over 2800 for quite some time (the highest rating in history). Younger players like rajdbov et all do not play more 'technically' than kasparov. He is the single greatest chess tactician ever, period (and an unmitigated jerk, meh) tactical brilliance.
The really interesting thing is that a GM combined with a computer is MUCH stronger than a GM or computer by themselves. I think some rule alteration to put a human more on 'par' with a computer could help the man vs. machine idea.
If they allowed kasparov to touch the pieces and move them on another board (like the computer can do perfectly in its memory) before making a move on the 'real' board, it might make the match more interesting. Also, as others have pointed out, humans get tired, this is the single biggest reason kasparov as faired somewhat poorly in the past.
The reason machines are strong at chess at all is because a positional advantage can usually be translated into a material advantage within 7 moves or so (14 ply) as opposted to games like Go, so brute force tends to work. The trouble with computers is they will never blunder, never, so every move the human makes must be optimal.
This is the constant claim of the meaning of computers outpacing humans at chess, and it's complete BS.
Machines have been outpacing humans in various endeavours for years. Eventually computers will be powerful enough and well programmed enough that they'll never lose (although they certainly will still draw).
Big deal. Either show me the sprinter who can beat a formula 1 or show me the movement to claim there are no longer human champions in speed. I don't see either of those, so I don't see why it should matter for a mental game.
I see no reason why we should care if computers can someday see all possible positions 35 moves out. Chess isn't about that. Chess is a game of reason, of insight, of spacial perception, of memory, of stamina (you try concentrating on one thing for 6 hours), and of emotion. Seeing forcing variations a dozen moves out is rarely part of the game for humans, and plenty of players have risen to the top of the game almost never calculating beyond 2 or 3 moves out. Giving a machine an 800HP engine and wheels takes absolutely nothing away from the human accomplishment of mastering the game.
It will be a draw. It pays better than loosing, and why risy a defeat when you can get a draw. All GMs of the world are doing that and, if the computer is really smart, it will do the same...
I mean, machines have beaten us for a long time.
We're not complaining about cars going faster than us. That's why it's still exciting to watch the Olympics 100-meters.
I don't care one bit about man vs. machine in chess.
All I care is man vs. man.
And neither will they ever need more than 640K of RAM.
The problem with using empirical evidence is that it's dealing with then. This is now. In the future we will have quantum computers with enough storage space to calculate (or just lookup) a winning path from any possible position.
Computers will inevitably surpass meat brains. The real question is: when, and what sort of computer?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If a match is an even number of games then if both play optimally it'll be draw.