Computers Win at Man vs Machine Championship

Fanfan writes "Chessbase is reporting that the man vs. machine championship ended badly for the humans : The event ended in a depressing 3.5:8.5 loss by the humans to the computers. Both Fritz and Hydra scored a remarkable 3.5 points out of four games, while an out-of-form Junior ended up with 1.5 points after the only computer loss in this tournament (to 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin)."

Play Go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory Go post.

Seriously, chess or computers is a brute-force exercise in going through all the possible permutations on the chessboard. If only life was so simple and limited.

Go is about constant evaluation, pattern recognition, and balance and computers can't touch it.

What can chess software do beyond playing chess? Everything is mapped out ahead of time. The pieces abilities are always known and their movement and purpose is predetermined.

What is that stone for? Attack, defense, infrastructure? All three? Is it part of group A or group B? Depends on how play goes.

A computer that can analyze Go can analyze life. There are too many factors interacting simultaneously to brute-force so you must actually move forward with AI. Chess is a dead end.

Depressing? Hardly.

[ZeeCog]

I wouldn't call this depressing at all. After all, humans can still manage the task of playing chess, speaking any different number of languages, walking (controlling thousands upon thoudands of muscular fibers simultaneously), observing and comprehending the world around us, _designing_ those computers that beat us, and the myriad of other miracles that we perform on an hourly basis. I'd say, if anything, we should be patting these puny little computers on the head, condescendingly congratulating them on their miniscule achievment.

Anyone else amazed?

[Warpedcow]

Is anyone else amazed that the winner, Fritz 8, was running on a mere 1.7GHZ laptop???