10 Years After Big Blue Beat Garry Kasparov

Jamie found another MIT Technology review story, this time about Chess, Supercomputing, Garry Kasparov, and trying to make sense of just what exactly it all meant when a computer finally beat a grand master. An interesting piece that touches on what it means to play chess, the difference between humanity and machinery and how super computers don't care when they are losing. Worth your time.

Comments

Re:the supercomputers advantage...

[Anonymous Coward]

in defense of kasparov, big blue also had help from kasparov's previous competitors to look over and recommend moves for big blue to move, so it wasn't really the machine alone that beat kasparov, he was defeated by a supercomputer and a few of his previous competitors.

Obligatory

[D-Cypell]

But what about 'Go'? 'Go' is much harder for computers to play. Let's all talk about 'Go'.

Re:Obligatory

[SoVeryTired]

Actually, backgammon was essentially 'solved' in the 80's by a program known as TD-gammon, which used Temporal difference learning along with self play. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_difference_l earning

As far as I know, the major difficulty in writing a strong go playing program isn't the search space, but the fact that there are so many opposing aims that it's very hard to write a good heuristic. For instance, players have to decide wether to go for speed or security in their play. Deciding whether to expand territory quickly and risk invasion, or to build up a small stronghold is a major factor in the game.

What is "intelligence"

[pzs]

People seem to be very sensitive about computers doing things they think only humans should be able to do. They dismiss defeating a chess grand master or the Turing Test as toy problems.

I did an AI degree in the mid 90s and one of the things we covered was the definition of intelligence. After running through a few unsatisfactory definitions, my conclusion was that people used intelligence to mean whatever could be done better by a human being than anything else...

Actually, my favourite definition of intelligence, partly because of its succinctness, is "productive laziness".

Peter

Re:What is "intelligence"

[lawpoop]

People seem to be very sensitive about computers doing things they think only humans should be able to do. They dismiss defeating a chess grand master or the Turing Test as toy problems. I guess you can count me as one of those people. I don't think it's a big deal that a computer can solve complex math problem or play chess well. Most people would have a difficult time with that. While math, science and engineering are great things and have provided a lot of benefit to us, I'm more interested in the sort of 'hunter/gatherer on the African Savannah' problems. Those to me seem to be the basis of human intelligence.

For instance, how do you see a trail as it winds over grassland and leads into the woods? How does one see a year old trail that is partially overgrown, or a new trail not completely tramped down. How do you track down an animal from smattering of scat, nibbles and tracks over rocks, dirt, grassland, and the tree line? How does a human being see a camouflaged predator slinking behind the tree line? How do you read the sky and know what the weather will be later that day? How do you look at a river and know if it's crossable or not? Back at home, how do you play your relatives, friends, and enemies in the tribe so that you are elected leader when the Big Man passes away? Or how do you manage to convince your husband that your new pregnancy is his, and not your secret lovers'?

Computers seem to be like idiot savants. They are good at logic puzzles, things like factoring large number or memorizing the phone books. That's a very useful tool in our technological society, but I don't think it's the basis of human intelligence. Like some Autistic person, computers suck as the basics of social interaction, which any three year old understands the basic concepts of. I remember my friend's three year old putting on her parents clothes and getting dressed up when she heard that her parents were going to a Halloween party -- all without prompting. What kind of intelligence do you need to understand the concepts of 'a party' or 'dressing up'? Or simple thinks like standing on two legs or filling a glass of water -- never mind hunting and eating another animal, or following a trail.

I did an AI degree in the mid 90s and one of the things we covered was the definition of intelligence. After running through a few unsatisfactory definitions, my conclusion was that people used intelligence to mean whatever could be done better by a human being than anything else... Well, my definition includes things that organic nervous systems are good at, such as walking, migrating, or hunting.

Re:the supercomputers advantage...

[Coryoth]

Are you proposing that Kasparov doesn't "tweak" his game play? That he doesn't learn and adapt? No, but if I recall correctly Kasparov was not given the equivalent game history of big blue to learn how it plays. There was a crucial move one of the early games where Kasparov essentially set a trap -- a situation where computers always opt for one move, but a more subtle human player opts for a different strategy. Given the computers play so far, which had conformed exactly to how computers play, Kasparov was fairly confident. But then deep blue went the other way, against anything any other computer would have done, and completely against all expectation. That really threw Kasparov; he thought IBM was cheating since the move deep blue made was so uncharacteristic for a computer (and even for deep blue's play so far). Things quickly went downhill from there because Kasparov really had no idea what he was playing against anymore, while the computer had been trained extensively on his style of play.

As far as I know no explanation for the strange uncharacteristic move was given by IBM, and deep blue didn't make any other startlingly non computer like moves for the rest of the tournament. It's a rather interesting puzzle.

Re:the supercomputers advantage...

[feijai]

Sure. But Kasparov didn't have access to Deep Blue's "previous games", or indeed any information about the system at all. They kept him in the dark. IBM also insisted that there be no game breaks -- not an issue for Deep Blue of course -- but a very *big* deal for professional chess players. But most importantly, IBM's team of chess masters and coders modified the system between chess games after analyzing Kasparov's strategy the previous game. That is, he wasn't playing Deep Blue: he was playing Deep Blue being adapted in semi-real-time by a bunch of human experts. And crucially, IBM hid this fact, knowing that it'd be (rightly) considered highly suspect.

Re:This article would be more relevant if

[msully4321]

I was under the impression that the rules allowed them to do that: http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/watch/html/c. 8.html "13. At any time during play, IBM may replace any or all of the computer hardware and/or software being used to play the games" But it's still kind of dirty..