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Deep Blue vs. Kasparov 10th Anniversary
qeorqe writes "For the tenth anniversary of Deep Blue's victory over the world chess champion Garry Kasparov,
Wired has an interview with Deep Blue developer Murray Cambell. The discuss the power of the now-aging supercomputer (equivalent to just one Cell processor), and the nonexistent future of PC vs. Human chess contests. 'It's almost the end of the story for chess in the sense that matches between chess machines and grand masters are becoming less interesting because it's so difficult for the human grand masters to compete successfully. They're even taking relatively dramatic steps like giving handicaps to computers, making them play the game with a pawn less or playing the game with less time. We're past the stage where there's a debate about who's better -- machines or grand masters -- and we're just looking for interesting ways to make the competition fairer.'"
At brute forcing things.
humans can only be the dominate species for so long!
Hello Skynet!
How about we play overnight on January 19, 2038? I'll use this mechanical chess clock to keep track of my times, and Deep Blue can use those two 32-bit integers holding time_t, and subtract one from the other!
Can anyone comment at how well chess apps like Junior or Fritz are at playing grand masters at Fischer Random Chess?
and we're just looking for interesting ways to make the competition fairer.
Make them play go.
Direct away from face when opening.
We knew this was coming.
However, there are still many games that computers are a long way away from beating skilled human opponents.
Poker
Go
Rock Paper Scissors
Mixed Martial Arts
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A quick note for anyone interested in this sort of thing who hsn't already run across it: there is a great documentary on the Kasparov/Deep Blue contest called Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. Well worth checking out.
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Chess is a zero sum perfect information game. Even a sufficently powerful computer with non optimal programming will at worst now hold its own with the best humans. Time to look for a different game. I believe decently talented players can still beat the best computer Go programs because although similar to chess the game strategy is more complex. When the computer programs eventually starts winning at Go, and win they will, I suggest kick boxing as the next challenge.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I mean, anything in the last 40 years as a result of writing chess programs and building chess playing hardware?
Yeah.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This takes a lot more than brute-forcing. I think that the reason computers play chess so well more likely good search algorithms. According to the article, deep-blue is able to computer about 200,000,000 moves per second. If the strategy was a depth-first search of the state-space of chess (which have an average branching factor of 35) and all moves were considered, then deep-blue would only think about 5-6 moves ahead. I think Kasparov can do a bit better than that. However, not all moves are considered. A lot of intelligent pruning techniques can be applied in chess. Apart from that, I would assume that deep-blue also has quite a bit of storage capacity, so it could cache previous searches.
Human: *kick* OW! MOTHER-!
:(
Robot: (robotic noises) *squish*
Human: My kidneys.
This is the secret that the article, or the Deep Blue group, isn't so quick to point out. The human versus computer match didn't turn the tide when computing power grew, as chess is still sufficiently more complex for exhaustive branch searches on even todays best hardware.
No, the tide turned when the programmers employeed chess masters to detail out their end game stratiges. Once the software was programed with these functions, it then had same ability to analyze end game situations, just as a chess master does, but it could do it with less likelyhood of missing opportunities that lead to advantages and wins.
I think it was the BBC a few years ago recorded a game between him and Nigel Short and intercut it with interviews of what they were thinking about the state of the game as it evolved. Kasparov was massively impressive with the sheer speed and coherence of his though and to me as a non chess player his almost psychic understanding of what Short was thinking was just amazing. Short after thinking he was winning and then realising what had just happen when Kasparov creamed him in a trap was classic.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Computers are so good at chess now that it's embarrassing. Unless you've been on the cover of Chess Life, any of the good PC chess programs can trounce you. Fritz at €119.90, runs on single or multiprocessor PCs, is rated at FIDE 2808 or so, and wins against Kasparov about half the time. If you're not a rated player, the chess programs for cell phones can beat you.
One of the experts in computer chess explained what's happened. Study of human grandmaster games indicates that about one move in ten is suboptimal, even at that level. That's enough to give computers that don't make mistakes a significant edge.
Computers are now so far ahead that there's a serious problem with cheating using a computer in chess competition, Several cheaters were caught at the 2006 World Open. "Two players are under suspicion of having received help from computers at the World Open in Philadelphia. One locked himself in a bathroom stall, the other, who was leading the event before the last round and stood to win $18,000, was caught wearing a "hearing aid" which turned out to be a wireless receiver used for surreptitious communications. The New York Times reports."
Chess players at major tournaments are now being searched.
The amazing thing is that the computers only beat humans by looking at every single possibility. I think Deep Blue processed something like 200 million chess positions a second. But human grandmasters usually only consider 3 or 4 moves during their typical two-minutes of thinking. The AI guys still can't figure out how the grandmasters just "know" which 3 or 4 moves to consider.
It's hard for me to get excited about a computer playing chess. It's like watching a computer randomly generate a trillion different 10 line poems and then picking one and saying, "Look, it's an artiste!"
Slow the computer down until it can process information at the maximum speed a human synapse can fire, and see who wins a timed chess match.
http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=Game+Over+Kasparo v+Machine
Perhaps there should be a competition where the computer entrants are limited in mass (ca. 1.5 Kg) and power (ca. 25 Watts) as are human brains. Maybe a temperature limit as well, i.e., operating at under 40 Celsius.
Airplanes fly faster and higher than birds. What if they don't flap their wings?
if a computer can process all these and still play chess then we need to worry.
Or have a computer play one chess game against a human, and then 2 rounds of kickboxing. We'll see who wins, algorithms or a chuck norris round-house kick.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were capable of staying awake long enough.
Then I come back here and find this article. I don't know what my point is but I just love the semi-random nature of brain feeding on the internet. For more information:
Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
An xkcd comic.
Cheers.
There was an article in Scientific American magazine circa 1992 that predicted that at some point a computer would have enough power to have every possible move stored up, and upon starting the game it would have immediately announed "Mate in X moves." As you continued to play, it would eliminate millions of games, while still counting down "Mate in X-1 moves.."
Almost all chess programs now have an "opening library" of opening move strategies, so it's not that far to extend that library to 10-15-20-50-100 moves...
...and eventually took up more useful causes.
:^(
He's been last seen getting arrested for "protesting" the Putin regime (actually, he was picked up off the street just for suspicion that he was going to). Good for him. With his brains, he could probably beat Putin from inside a cell, and may have to.
--
Toro
personally, as strictly a hobby programmer, i've found the challenge of writing a chess program a fun opportunity to poke around in some code. writing a chess program is a problem that's been solved a zillion times now, but it is still a fun challenge.
frog blast the vent core
Does this mean the current world's best humans could still beat the best computers? Not necessarily. I am not entering the debate on whether computers or humans are better. As others pointed out, there's plenty of games that humans still excel at. I just wanted to point out that Deep Blue's 'victory' was less a milestone in computing power, and more a footnote in program development.
Feel free to flame. Gotta go play in the Halo 3 Beta.
--Jason E (Seattle)
I say start making better AI for regular computer games.
Have computers emulate how humans play.
------RM
There have been a couple of games I've been in where I'm winning and, entering the end game, my opponent is suddenly getting very tough. I guess I won't complain if it helps me sharpen my end game, but, with tools like SCID so easily available, I can't help but wonder if I'm actually playing Crafty for the last third of the game sometimes.
;)
This is only once in a while mind you. I think most correspondance players are like me, they'd rather loose on thier own then use an engine to chalk up a win they didn't really earn.
Frankly, I think I've made enough grizzly blunders that no one would ever accuse me of using a chess engine
A goal is a dream with a deadline
First off, let me say that he always struck me as a bit on the arrogant side, but then again, I really don't know the guy.
I remember that match though. Time and time again, Kasparov would give IBM rematch after rematch after rematch until Deep Blue finally won. It seems that, as soon as they did, Deep Blue was re-assigned and that was the end of it (maybe someone will correct me, but that's my recollection). So, you never really knew if the win was just one of those "on any given day" phenomena. One win is just not convincing against an opponent that has a history of beating you.
Yea, Kasparov whined a bit about it but he had a point, let the machine play him in a regular tournament and see what happens.
My personal opinion is, on that day, Kasparov was not really taking Deep Blue seriously enough and it surprised him. I certainly remember his reaction when he saw he was loosing....and it was right toward the beginning of the game as well as I recall.
Mute point I guess....I don't think Deep Fritz can be beaten by any human anyways.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
He also held a press conference after he lost and challanged Deep Blue to play him in a "regular match", where both sides can review each others games....IBM didn't accept those terms and that does diminish their victory.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
But they fail miserably at first person shooters.