Human Interference In Computer Chess Championship?

migstradamus writes "In a twist with interesting implications for the computer chess world, the intervention of a human programmer and a human arbiter have had a decisive impact on the World Computer Chess Championship that finished today in Graz, Austria. What happens when a programmer acts against his creation's best interest? ChessBase has an eye-witness report on the dilemma. This year's event was already controversial due to the disqualification of one of the programs midway through for being derivative of an open source program."

Comments

The ICGA: A board of old imposters

[Anonymous Coward]

LIST doesn't use bitboards as I am told so how could it be a Crafty clone at all??

Dann Corbit had seen the source of a former version and he judged all as completely different to CRAFTY. Ulli Tuerke (COMET) say that the two progs are
totally different in their behaviour.

These imposters should imediately retire after this tournament. People like Bruce Moreland and other younger characters should lead the union of computerchess. Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it is a crime to disturb him at his home.

What I find interesting is the following quote:

"The program List is suspected to be a clone of the program Crafty. Autor Fritz Reul failed to prove otherwise and allowed a final deadline to pass."

So apparently an author's reputation and integrity can be maligned on "suspicion." What is truly tragic is the "assumed guilty" posture of the accused. LIST was suspected to be a clone, and was disqualified because the author failed to prove otherwise. How incredibly unjust.

Furthermore, it does not appear that the ICGA followed thier own rule:

"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers. Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code, in their application details. programs which are discovered to be close derivatives of others (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice. For this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must be available on demand to the Tournament Director." [emphasis added]

LIST was only suspected of being a clone; it was not discovered to be a clone. The rule, as written, places the burden on the ICGA to prove it is a close derivate of another before disqualification; it does not place the burden on the accused to prove that it is not a derivative. Thus, the rule is inapplicable to the present situation.

The ICGA needs a procedure to follow in resolving these disputes. Apparently it has none, so it made a procedure up at the expense of an author's reputation. Furthermore, the ICGA has now possibly damaged the author's reputation beyond repair. Allegations of copyright infringement are serious concerns in the software community. Finally, the ICGA should have accommodated the accused author's schedule - is it too much to ask to give a person a small reprieve while he tends to examinations rather than publicly call into question the author's integrity in a worldwide publication on the Internet.

A public retraction is in order, and an apology.

Re:The ICGA: A board of old imposters

[You're All Wrong]

"The ICGA needs a procedure to follow in resolving these disputes"

But it does have one - the inspection of the code.
Fritz refused to permit the inspection of his code.
ICGA run this show, if Fritz doesn't play by their rules, he's out on his ear.
I thought the flexibility offered by the ICGA was perfectly respectable. Remember - this is in the _middle_ of a tournament, decisions need to be made sooner rather than later.

However, I respect Dann Corbit, from my exchanges with him in other fields and believe him to be honest and entirely trustworthy and professional.

So quite probably Fritz is _innocent_ of plagiarism, but _guilty_ of stubornness.

It is their show. Like it or lump it.

I'd like to know what would happen if he were now were to submit his full program source. Would the ICGA lift or shorten the ban? (He is still guilty of not following the expected protocol, after all.)

YAW.

Re:Treat it as a bug...

[You're All Wrong]

But how can the notification of a three move repetition be not an instruction to claim the draw? If all the other programs use the same ambiguous announcement, then you could say that it's not ambiguous, and that it actually _means_ "claim a draw".

However, as some ambiguity does remain it's a good safeguard for the ICGA to specify a list of acceptable phrases that are to be taken to mean "claim a draw" (and thus direct instructions the hyuman may not decline to follow).

Using principles of human linguistics (if that's what people say when they mean X,then it means X) and looking at things in time order:
1) the stronger program had a crap bug.
2) the weaker program did actually draw first it notified the outside world that that state had occured.
3) the human driving it followed the protocol for making the TD aware of this.
4) the TD failed to understand the situation.
5) the human driver broke both the rules by not following the computer's instructions and protocol by continuing to play.

So all three parties went awry here.
However, there's nothing against the rules in having bugs, so the first place where something went wrong was the _TD_ dismissing the information he was given as not requiring immediate resolution.

However, the TDs have a very difficult job, and it's an unfortunate situation that's occured.

If I were on a committee (I am for other games with strict protocols, and by heck, we've had a lot worse than this in our time), in review I'd:
- award the draw to the computer that claimed it.
- admonish the player for breach of protocol. (perhaps disqualification for one tournament).
- get lots of feedback from all competing authors, the ICGA exists _for_ them, and must serve their common interests. Yes, rules (protocol) meeetings can be excedingly boring, but it's only when you thrash things out that you can reach conclusions.
- issue an unambiguous directive regarding ambiguous statements.

YAW.