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Neural Network Chess Computer Abandons Brute Force For "Human" Approach
An anonymous reader writes: A new chess AI utilizes a neural network to approach the millions of possible moves in the game without just throwing compute cycles at the problem the way that most chess engines have done since Von Neumann. 'Giraffe' returns to the practical problems which defeated chess researchers who tried to create less 'systematic' opponents in the mid-1990s, and came up against the (still present) issues of latency and branch resolution in search. Invented by an MSc student at Imperial College London, Giraffe taught itself chess and reached FIDE International Master level on a modern mainstream PC within three days.
I have one between my ears, and it is amazing! No figuring out what it will come up with to solve a problem! :-)
if it wasn't for those darn meddling computers.
the big Computer tournaments are run by TCEC at chessdom.com - there it would be paired against other engines, of whom Komodo and Stockfish have been pretty much dominating every year since season 2 -
truth is, all computer chess is computer vs. computer nowadays - the losses come from different evaluations of positions - then the programmers try to correct it, etc - but since all engines are running the same hardware with resources, the best performers should win -
you can follow Season 8 (round 1b right now) here
http://tcec.chessdom.com/live....
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
For comparison, GnuChess also plays at an International Master level. The article says this chess engine is much slower than GnuChess.
Humans are able to play chess at a high level because they are able to brutally prune the decision tree.....a grandmaster can quickly eliminate most moves as useless (although he/she will probably think of it in reverse terms: saying he/she quickly identified the important moves in the position). A computer that could combine that kind of pruning with the massive searching power would be ridiculously powerful. Better than our current computers by an order of magnitude.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It will lose to those computers. It only plays at around the level of GnuChess, so don't be impressed. To be honest, I'm not even sure why this is a story.
His method of dealing with the move horizon is cool, but I'm sure someone has thought of it before (since I have, and if I thought of it, someone else surely has).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
wow - ai may truly be around the corner. npr had a story today saying that ai will come at us unpredictably and in fits, stop and starts. from a guy that learned computer science in the 80's, i think this is truly a stunning advancement.
I'm old enough to remember when the MCP could only play chess!
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
While I use the rest room. I'll be right back.
It only plays at around the level of GnuChess, so don't be impressed.
You should be impressed. Not by it's level of play (which is not impressive), but by the fact that it:
1. Taught itself to play
2. Reached FIDE Master Level in THREE DAYS.
To be honest, I'm not even sure why this is a story.
See #1 and #2 above.
It didn't teach itself to play, it searched through the move-tree to fill in a database.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Despite the fact that computers can now beat even the best human players at chess, I've always been of the opinion that beating a human at chess was not really a solved problem, because where chess programs do so by exhaustively examining millions of board combinations to make even a single move, a grand master chess player will generally contemplate but the tiniest fraction of that amount.... and they can still play chess pretty damn well. If a computer only considered as many board combinations as a grandmaster did, but still otherwise using the same chess playing algorithms as what are typically used today, even a rank amateur chess player could probably beat it.
To me, the problem of making an a chess playing algorithm that can beat a human being should really be figuring out exactly what it is that the best chess-playing humans do when they play that enables them to play as well as they do *WITHOUT* the ability to consider every combination.
Personally, I'm betting cracking that nut is more than halfway to achieving general AI.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Are we sure it did not just learn how to install and launch GnuChess?
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How accurate is the "taught itself chess" claim? Did it start only knowing the rules? Were openings programmed into it, or deduced by the AI?
I am a cynical man, and my suspicion is that this "breakthrough" was heavily human-assisted. If it really did use a neural network to calculate openings, midgame and endgame from scratch, we should all be applauding an incredible achievement. If it is merely press-release hyperbole - damn you for lying to get some cheap publicity.
What's the difference?
What's the difference?
The rules were programmed in advance.
For example, you couldn't put it in front of scrabble and expect it to do something reasonable.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, that is what existing high level chess programs do, and exactly what this one doesn't do. Please go and learn about what a neural network is before commenting on this story again.
I thought Claude Shannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... wrote the first program to play chess. Among other things he dabbled in.
What's the difference?
The rules were programmed in advance.
For example, you couldn't put it in front of scrabble and expect it to do something reasonable.
Yeah, I never read the manual to scrabble either.
QWTNGWING is totally a word!
Go ahead, give it the scrabble manual. See what it does. Give it a reading teacher, it won't matter. It is incapable of doing more than playing chess. That's what it was programmed to do.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Neural network used to determine what moves are best. Not what the rules of chess are.
Heh, sit anyone down in front of a chessboard without 'programming them' to play and see if they figure it out. At some point the game is DEFINED By the delineation of rules.
Giraffe's magic is supposedly in the decision-pruning algorithms. Surely some of the concepts involved would be transferable to other games, like Scrabble.
Maybe you won't be satisfied until an actual humanoid robot is moving pieces by itself, having bought the chess set from a local shop.
I think YOU need to go learn about what a neural network is before trying to be condescending. I agree with you in sentiment - it definitely did teach itself inasmuch as such things get taught to neural networks - but functionally there's not a big difference. I agree a lot more with the other Anonymous Coward who said 'whats the difference'
But Von Neumann was something special.
A polymath and a polyglot, his early work with chess is not to be scoffed at.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Maybe you won't be satisfied until an actual humanoid robot is moving pieces by itself, having bought the chess set from a local shop.
Mate, if you're going to say it can teach itself, then it better be able to actually teach itself. I have no objection to this chess program as a clear demonstration of weak AI.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What's the difference?
The rules were programmed in advance
A person who would be considered having taught themselves to play would still have to have access to the rules from somewhere.
Your comment makes it sound like you define "teach itself to play" as needing to reinvent the entire game independently
Talking about the phrase "Teach itself" is a mere semantic dispute. I would rather discuss what the AI actually does.
Talking about the phrase "Teach itself" is a mere semantic dispute. I would rather discuss what the AI actually does.
Very well said. I will think more deeply about that in my future conversations.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I suppose it would be more impressive if it learned how to play without knowing the rules. On the other hand, that's a little unfair, no?
Although, there are types of neural networks that have learned to play things like Mario Kart by watching human players play.
Oh, I see why people are confused with what I wrote. I meant, the rules for filling in the database were programmed in advance, the guidelines. The AI can't change its program.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It uses a neural network to recognize good moves. If you don't consider training a neural network "changing it's program" then I've got some bad news regarding your own autonomy.
Why are you so certain that a neural network matches a human brain?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What's the difference?
The rules were programmed in advance.
For example, you couldn't put it in front of scrabble and expect it to do something reasonable.
The rules are also programmed in advanced for classic chess engines. Furthermore said chess engines also have pretabulated enourmous opening libraries (done by humans) and end tables (again done by humans). Take away those precomputed libraries and your mighty chess engine is as stupid as they come.
Will you prune your decisions, though?
> It is incapable of doing more than playing chess
Generate heat? I just spent $1000 on a space heater. Don't tell me a heater isn't more useful than a chess program!
You make some very important points in your post: for your new product to take over, it needs to do everything the old product does, and then do something better. However, take this into account:
1) The team that built Deep Blue were IBM employees, and had so they had different resources available. I doubt this student (I call him kid) had a grandmaster available to help him fine-tune his evaluator, or a fab to build custom silicon for his chess-playing machine. Also, it is very instructive to watch the documentary "Game Over" to learn a few things about how IBM used the game against Kasparov to push up their share price. That should gave some idea of the resources they have thrown at the project.
2) The same Deep Blue team were coming from the CS department at Carnegie-Mellon Univ. where they did their Ph.D. on computer chess, and studied with a prof that spent a lot of his career on this subject. They were grown-ups with a lot of experience in the field, and much wiser than a young student.
3) The current computer chess champion (Komodo) again had its evaluator fine-tuned by a grandmaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
4) Most of the top chess programs have been written by programmers that have written other chess engines before. Their "success" is their 3rd of 4th re-write of a chess engine, and no amount of talent can replace that kind of experience.
Given all these points (and a lot more that can be identified along the same lines) I would say this kid did a good job.
"Models" not "matches", and the results (sometimes literally) speak for themselves.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There are a few blocks with "input" and "hidden layer 1"/ hidden layer 2. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing
At some point you have to stop explaining subject specific phrases in an article, "hidden layer" means something something to people who have a basic understanding of the subject, google it if you don't.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
To some extent neural nets do model what happens in a human brain, but they also do things that we're fairly sure human neurons dont, most notable being back propagation, or at least not in the format we do it with neural networks. Thats not to say there are analogous mechanisms, in fact there *must* be one (how else to explain the elasticity of inputs). But there are critical differences.
Now that doesnt mean of course that a computer neural network is stupider. In fact cell for cell our neural networks out perform the shit out of biological neurons , its just the brains have so much more , both in terms of mechanisms and sheer neuron count + connectivity.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
easy to follow..
Talking about the phrase "Teach itself" is a mere semantic dispute. I would rather discuss what the AI actually does.
The more important semantic dispute is whether you should throw ever use the unqualified phrases "AI" or "Artificial Intelligence" about a limited computer program.
I can see that "weak AI" is acceptable as a technical term, as it is clearly differentiated from anything to do with intelligence as generally understood.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is weak AI, not strong AI.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why are you so certain that a neural network matches a human brain?
Maybe because a neural network, for a fact, matches the human brain.
This is well understood. What isnt well understood is the learning mechanism, but we do know for certain that it is to a large degree a timing-dependent hebbian learning process. To be quite specific, Hebb's Rule is a good predictor of neuron activation in brains. People did fucking science.
At least become casually acquainted with the subject before acting like a know-it-all. Clearly you don't know shit. What possesses people like you to act like you fucking know something when you know for certain that you don't is beyond me. Come on guy... you know you are wholly ignorant on the subject, so why are you acting like some fucking knowledgeable person about it? You do know that its wrong to do that, right? Its not just wrong, its dishonest. That makes you a dishonest fuck.
"His name was James Damore."
Thats not to say there are analogous mechanisms, in fact there *must* be one (how else to explain the elasticity of inputs).
The neurons in a brain to a large extent use some form of hebbian learning. We know this for a fact because Hebb's Rule is proven to be a good predictor of neuron activations.
"His name was James Damore."
It doesn't even "recognize" good moves. It used Stockfish's evaluation algorithm to build up its own database. It did not "learn" anything new, because Stockfish still runs circles around it.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Come on guy... you know you are wholly ignorant on the subject, so why are you acting like some fucking knowledgeable person about it? You do know that its wrong to do that, right? Its not just wrong, its dishonest. That makes you a dishonest fuck.
Oooh, insults, you sound so intelligent when you insult me.
Maybe because a neural network, for a fact, matches the human brain. This is well understood.
No it's not lol. They match some aspects of neurons, but not all of them. We don't even entirely understand what neurons do. It's unlikely we even know all the different types of neurons that exist.
Getting back to the chess-playing neural network in this story..........it is a specific, chess-playing neural network. As a result, it clearly belongs in the subset of weak-AI. Neural networks in general may match a human brain (something we don't know, which you so elegantly try to cover up with insults), but this particular one clearly doesn't.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You are just an ignorant fuck that likes to pretend that he knows something, even when you know exactly zero.
It's unlikely we even know all the different types of neurons that exist.
There are 8 types you ignorant fuck.
"His name was James Damore."
in your earlier post, you stated quite clearly that the learning process isn't understood. There's plenty more about the brain that's not understood. If you'd like an introduction to the topic, I can give you some book recommendations, but your rage is rather entertaining.
Shall I try to enrage you some more? Did you know there are over 50 types of neuron in the retina alone?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."