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IBM Entertainment Games Technology

Kasparov OpEd On His Latest Match 403

Posted by timothy from the muse-against-the-machine dept.
molrak writes "Garry Kasparov has written his thoughts and observations on the difference between his recent battle with Deep Junior as opposed to his battle against Deep Blue, including some of the fundamental differences between the two programs. If you missed out on the event, you can catch up with it at the site of the event's sponsor, including both 2d and 3d viewing options. (Note, viewing options require both site registration with x3dworld and proprietary Microsoft software.)"
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Kasparov OpEd On His Latest Match More

Kasparov OpEd On His Latest Match

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  • Kasparov Biography (Score:4, Informative)

    by syr ( 647840 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:36PM (#5322503)
    Here is a biography [sympatico.ca] of everyone's favorite chess savior protecting humanity against the robotic horde. Included is a list of matches and results throughout the years.

    GameTab [gametab.com] - Game Reviews Database

    • Chess savior?! The man that almost destroyed the Grand MAster's Association after resigning to compete in tournaments he had previously denied to people? Kasparov is the most arrogant chess player since Fischer but not nearly as talented.

      Quick little tid-bit not in the savior's bio: In the late nineties there was a tournament held in Cuba to honor Capablanca [chesscorner.com]. Everyone who was anyone (at the time) was there to pay their respects to one of the greatest players ever, Kasparov included. This was the last known public siting of Fischer among and by chess players. Kasparov saw him enter the room in his (Fischer's) cotton shorts and shirt and wide brimmed straw hat and decided to offer a game and his hand for a shake. Fischer just looked at him, looked at his hand and walked on by to take in a game with his old buddy Spassky [infoplease.com]

      All I'm saying is while he may seem like a hero to people of the world for having the "guts" to take on the machines people in the know realize it's his ego. If he was really the mane that could pull Chess out of the swell it's in (yes, that's including throughout Europe contrary to popular belief) he would play more instead of holding out for money and endorsements and play who's ready to play not who he thinks will bring in the bucks when he does.

      • Re:Kasparov Biography (Score:5, Insightful)

        by damiam ( 409504 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:26PM (#5323026)
        Kasparov saw him enter the room in his (Fischer's) cotton shorts and shirt and wide brimmed straw hat and decided to offer a game and his hand for a shake. Fischer just looked at him, looked at his hand and walked on by to take in a game with his old buddy Spassky

        Maybe I'm misreading what you said, but that sounds like Fischer was the arrogant one, and Kasparov was just being polite.

      • Bobby Fischer praised the 9/11 attacks over the radio. He can go to hell and burn for all I care.

      • So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dh003i ( 203189 )
        So what, he's arrogant? He's also done a lot for the chess world. And, quite frankly, he's the best chess player since B. Fischer (yes, still better than that upstart Kramnick).

        The simple fact is, that when people talk about the best chess players ever, there are two candidates for #1: Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. Since they've never played each-other, we don't know who's better than who, and it's a topic of unsubstantiated speculation.

        Regarding Bobby Fischer, I'm tired of hearing about his anti-semitism. Bobby Fischer is himself half-Jewish, and is friends with several Jewish people, despite his anti-semitic beliefs. Irrelevant of the man's political beliefs -- which he's entitled to, like the rest of us, think whatever the fuck he wants -- he's still one of the greatest chess players of all time.
  • Note, viewing options require both site registration with x3dworld and proprietary Microsoft software.

    And one soul addressed to 666 Luicifer Street, Seattle, WA.

  • The main difference... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:36PM (#5322511) Homepage


    Coming up with a chess program to beat Kasparov mercilessly just isn't fun anymore. I say we put more research into writing a chess program that will make him cry while beating him mercilessly
    • Not that your comment wasn't funny... but I don't think he's been beaten mercilessly yet.

      As I understand it, Deep Blue was a narrow victory and Deep Junior was a tie. Or did I miss something? I think the machines are gonna have to be winning 6-0 rather than tieing 3-3 before we'll see a tear from Mr. Kasparov. heh.

      • Re:The main difference... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:09PM (#5322680)
        Not only was the lastest match a tie, Kasparov actually made a stupid (for him) mistake in one of the earlier games which he might've won. The human element, it'll getcha every time. If Kasparov could always play at his best like Deep Junior can, then he could quite likely have beaten it this time around, too. Still, Deep Junior was an impressive, sexy bitch, as Kasparov says in this article. If _Kasparov_ is impressed, you should be, too!
    • no kiddin. wouldn't that be hilarious if the computer tricked him into aligning all his pieces to say 'ass' or something crazy like that? or maybe sending his king on a death lap around the board only to be cornered by pawns... that'd be the ultimate humiliation... muahahaha
    • Coming up with a chess program to beat Kasparov mercilessly just isn't fun anymore. I say we put more research into writing a chess program that will make him cry while beating him mercilessly
      Yes! Then maybe we can make Kasparov's head explode [mit.edu]!
    • a chess program that will make him cry while beating him mercilessly

      Simple. Make the computer wear a dress so Kasparov thinks he's been beaten by a woman. His opinions regarding women are so appalling that I always root for the machine.

      Well, I'd root for the machine anyway.

  • What? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Note, viewing options require both site registration with x3dworld and proprietary Microsoft software."

    Even if I already have my own 3d specs?

  • Aritificial Intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pavan_Gupta ( 624567 ) <`pg8p' `at' `virginia.edu'> on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:44PM (#5322551)
    Kasparov seems to think that making a powerful chess machine would constitute creating a machine with the power to "think." I hardly believe that to be correct, and moreover .. with enough proccessing power, a computer could map out chess moves far further into the future than kasparov could ever hope to.

    I guess the real question has more to do with .. where does one go after they realise that chess is only a little game?
    • The point being that chess is a, theoretically, *solvable* game. The precise solution isn't known, although we have a good deal of empirical data regarding possible solutions. (Although white to win has been proven)

      The chess computers rely on this empirical data, not on thinking. They *compute.* Big deal.

      To really demonstrate a machine that has something of the sort that could be truely called AI it will have to compete with a human player on at least a near even level at a complex and *unsolvable* game.

      Chess is the beginners level of game playing computers, and they're just about "getting there." Go is the Holy Grail, and they ain't even close. To date no one has made a Go playing program that can reasonably hold it's own against even a relative novice.

      KFG
      • You assume that there is such a thing as an "unsolvable" game. This is not, as far as I know, established. There are certainly things with a near-infinite number of potential solutions, but this is not the same as being unsolvable. Even subjective things (such as producing pleasing music) could theoretically be solvable given enough neurological data (i.e. a computer could use the data on how the human brain interprets music to compose music it knows to be pleasing to at least a certain segment of the population).

        • Re:an assumption (Score:3, Informative)

          by Jester99 ( 23135 )
          You assume that there is such a thing as an "unsolvable" game. This is not, as far as I know, established. This is not, as far as I know, established.

          Sure it has. I'll give you an unsolvable game right now.

          The source code to an entire program is written out by a game master. Two copies of the source are printed out. Two players are then each given an identical copy of the source, and a set of arguments that would be passed to the source were it compiled & executed. The goal is to determine if the program will exit correctly, or if it will halt in the middle. The first player to show either a) where it will halt or b) that it won't halt, wins.

          This is a game version of the halting problem [wikipedia.org]. It's been mathematically proven intractable; that is, there's no deterministic (e.g., algorithmic or procedural) method of doing this. You cannot write a computer program that will execute a set series of steps every time and determine what's the case here.

          Is this game fun? Probably not. :) But that doesn't take away from the fact that an intelligent human could look at a source printout and figure out if it halted or not, but no general algorithm can be deduced that would do so. Thus, for a computer to win at this game, it would actually have to show intelligence, and not raw computational skill.

          • Re:an assumption (Score:5, Insightful)

            by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:18PM (#5322992)
            Is this game fun? Probably not. :) But that doesn't take away from the fact that an intelligent human could look at a source printout and figure out if it halted or not, but no general algorithm can be deduced that would do so. Thus, for a computer to win at this game, it would actually have to show intelligence, and not raw computational skill.

            I was with you right up to the end. However it is most certainly not shown that a human can solve the halting problem. It is proven that (in the general case) no algorithm can say whether a program halts. The only way a human can prove whether an algorithm halts is by using mathematical formalisms that are also limited.

            What people can often do is make an "intelligent" guess about whether a program halts. In fact computers can do this too: you can provide a machine with a set of heuristics (rules of thumb) that it can use to estimate the likelihood that a program will halt. That program could do better than random, just as a human could. But that is not the same as proving the program does or does not halt.

            I have never seen any evidence to suggest that humans can solve the halting problem for the class of unsolvable programs.

            Nevertheless you are right that there are unsolvable games. In fact there are an infinite number of them.

            • Re:an assumption (Score:3, Interesting)

              by David Price ( 1200 )
              Here's an interesting exercise that one of my professors pointed out:

              int n = 4;
              while (n is the sum of two primes) n = n + 2;

              The question "is n the sum of some two primes?" is of course always computable in finite time; just try all the prime numbers less than n/2 until you find one that is different from n by another prime number.

              If you can show whether this program halts or not, then congratulations, you've solved the Goldbach conjecture [wolfram.com], one of the most famous open problems in mathematics.
          • I'm not convinced that a human is capable of solving the halting problem in the general case. In a case where the human can trace all possible execution paths, or deduce other things about the program's behavior, it's solvable, but a computer can solve the problem in these cases as well. In short, give me any particular program that a human can solve the halting problem for, and I'd bet you can codify the logic used so that a computer can do so just as well (and given enough samples, code a general computer program with the same power as the human in this domain).

            Basically, to prove your point, you'd need to show that humans have some processing power strictly greater than that of a Turing machine, which is a somewhat controversial thesis.

          • Re:an assumption (Score:5, Insightful)

            by egomaniac ( 105476 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @11:27PM (#5323489) Homepage
            But that doesn't take away from the fact that an intelligent human could look at a source printout and figure out if it halted or not, but no general algorithm can be deduced that would do so.

            Complete, utter, and unmitigated bullshit.

            If it can't be solved algorithmically, humans can't solve it either. Even if a human came up with the right solution, in the general case, you would never be able to prove it!

            Simple example: I write a program which "solves" chess. In other words, it loops through every possible game configuration and determines whether, say, white can always force a win. If so, it halts. Otherwise, it just drops into an infinite loop. Now, naturally, this game would take longer than the universe's lifespan to run, but that's not the point. The point is that determining whether or not this program halts is equivalent to solving the problem in the first place! To know whether or not it halts, you have to know whether or not white can always force a win. The halting problem is equally unsolvable for both man and machine. We both use algorithms, even if we don't understand our own algorithms. The fact that we do use algorithms means that we're just as subject to the rules of what is and is not computable.

            Put in other terms, a computer simulating a human brain would be able to solve the exact same problems as a human, and in the same ways. If a human can solve a problem (and prove it, not just make an intelligent guess), then it's by definition computable. The only counter to that is to assume that it is impossible to build a computer that simulates a human brain, but you're on shaky ground making such a claim.
        • Chaos theory can be used to prove it.

          The most trivial ( and for AI purposes useless) example is the single fair toss of a fair coin.

          Parchisi is a more advanced version. It is not resolvable to a guarunteed set of moves to ensure victory ( a draw being provably impossible).

          This is why games involving chance are so popular with the, ummmmm, populace. A five year old can beat an 80 year old who has been playing parchisi all of his life. Whereas the 80 year old will *never* lose a game of tic tac toe to the five year old, because it is not only solvable, it has been solved.

          Various form of games of cooperation are also unsolvable because it isn't even possible to define in advance what the goal is, let alone a stratagy to achieve it.

          Your point of view ( and that of many AI researchers) relies on the concept that universe is a predictable machine if one simply knows all the parameters, whereas it is now known that even if all the parameters are known results may be fundamentally unpredictable.

          KFG
          • I'm aware that there are unsolvable games; more specifically I was questioning the existence of unsolvable-by-a-computer games that are nonetheless solvable by a human. That is, for any given game, the computer should be able to play as well as or better than a human player. For unsolvable games, this simply means emulating the heuristics a human player uses.
            • By definition any game solvable by a human is solvable by a computer programed by a human.

              That isn't an example of AI. That's an example of solving an equation. A very complex equation, perhaps, but in essence it's no different than than a computer adding 2 and 2 and getting four, and no more proof of intelligence.

              Here's something for you to try. Write a computer program for Tic Tac Toe that only knows the *rules* and *deduces* on its own the perfect strategy.

              Not so easy.

              Now do it again with the Towers of Hanoi.

              KFG
              • There are some pretty good machine learning techniques that can do things like that. Some start with more hints than others, and some work better than others. It's definitely a very open area of research.

                I'd also note that if computers can do this, however, it's imposing stronger requirements on them than on humans -- most humans learn a great deal of things from others rather than deducing them on their own from basic rules or first principles, which is in some ways akin to programming a computer with strategies.
                • The question isn't whether they do, it's whether they *have* to.

                  You *can* learn to play an excellent game of chess by being told nothing but the rules. And many have. A few have even learned the rules just by observation.

                  The fact that many ( and I might argue most) people are idiotic robots would be beside the point if it weren't for the fact that even chimpanzees have shown greater problem solving abilities in certain areas than any computer has, or can be shown to be capable of.

                  Look, I'm not arguing that AI isn't possible. I don't see any inate reason why people can't build some sort of machine that can "think."

                  I'm simply stating that showing it can add two beads to two more beads and then hold them up for review ain't it. A Z80 isn't smarter than a human because it can recalculate a spreadsheet faster than a whole room full of accountants.

                  The accountant knows what the spreadsheet *means* (whatever that means).

                  Deductive and inductive reasoning are the key to intelligence and that has to be the proper goal of AI, and a computer that can't do it ain't smart.

                  *A* human was asked to determine whether an object contained the specified weight in gold, and the result was the law of displacment.

                  I've only asked for the Towers of Hanoi, which I was able to solve without hints. Is it really too much to ask a computer to demonstrate the same skill before I aknowledge it as my equal?

                  Now how about a computer that *concieves* the Towers of Hanoi.

                  KFG

      • Re:Aritificial Intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tpengster ( 566422 ) <slash@noSpAM.tpengster.com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:40PM (#5322824)

        The point being that chess is a, theoretically, *solvable* game.

        Actually, that is beside the point. The state space of chess has some 10^120 states, larger than the number of particles in the universe. For practical purposes chess is unsolvable.

        The precise solution isn't known, although we have a good deal of empirical data regarding possible solutions. (Although white to win has been proven)

        Um.. no, white has not been proven to win. If I'm wrong, Why don't you show us the solution?

        The chess computers rely on this empirical data, not on thinking. They *compute.* Big deal.

        OK, those are two different things. If they relied on empirical data, that means that they would simply be looking up moves in a table. They're not (until the very endgame). They're looking ahead and then measuring positional and material differences. Quite a difference. And for that matter, the human brain, by the strong AI theory, is just a computer. So Kasparov is "just" computing when he plays a move. He just happens to have a massively parallel computer with billions and billions of neurons making computations simultaneously. "Big deal" indeed

        Go is the Holy Grail, and they ain't even close. To date no one has made a Go playing program that can reasonably hold it's own against even a relative novice.

        Once computers win Go, people will complain that they are "just" doing pattern matching, and so forth. The truth is that critics like you will never be satisfied with the state of AI because once a problem is solved, it will also be demystified. The fact that programs would approach a problem differently from humans is to be expected. These are chess programs. Not brain emulators.
        • The number of possible *discrete* states is completely irrelevant.

          Most of them make no sense. To an intelligent being.

          The question isn't how many states, the question is the complexity of the mathmatical algorithm required to solve it.

          It would be perfectly possible to create a game ( a rather pointless one) with 10 times the number of possible states of chess but solvable quite easily by any freshman in mathematics. Or a child.

          For instance, take a "chess" board a godzillion+1 x godzillion in size. Each player gets one token. The players place their tokens on diagonal opposites. Each player can move their token one space in any direction. First player to reach the other side wins.

          The winning strategy is both simple and obvious, and first player to move wins every game. Despite the large number of possible states.

          You are confusing big and impressive numbers with complexity.

          KFG
      • The slightly less stupid one is about the solvability of chess. Yes, chess is theoretically solvable. However, the number of arrangements you would have to calculate are far greater than the number of atoms in the universe. Good luck solving that! The solvability of chess plays no role in the design of current (and future) chess programs. None of them can just "brute force" look down every decision tree. They have to be "smart" about which lines they care about and which they ignore. Programming in this smartness is what chess software is all about. As Kasparov said, it makes much more of a difference than two orders magnitude in processing speed. If Junior isn't real AI then we have no AI.

        Now for the more stupid thing: Where did you hear that "white win has been proven?" I think you're full of shit. All the evidence I heard points to black always being able to force a draw. But what would a proof of either look like?

        And if you do a search for how many posts here have mentioned that go programs are easier to beat than chess programs, you will see why you must now be shot.

      • The point being that chess is a, theoretically, *solvable* game.

        Interesting. Is there a formal proof of this somewhere? I don't recall having seen one.

        The chess computers rely on this empirical data, not on thinking. They *compute.* Big deal.

        I agree that chess computers are computing from empirical data. The really interesting question is whether this is all that humans do. You distinguish "computing" from "thinking", but that involves a large and contentious assumption that these are different things. It is quite possible that "computing" is "all" the human mind is doing.

        A (simplification of this) behavioralist view of AI is:

        1) Computers only compute
        2) If computers can do things that humans can (e.g. play chess), then:
        3) All humans are doing is compute

        In other words, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
        • > > The point being that chess is a, theoretically, *solvable* game.

          > Interesting. Is there a formal proof of this somewhere? I don't recall having seen one.

          The algorithm to do it is completely trivial, actually. You just construct a tree with every possible move branching out until completion. (Actually, I think it's a DAG, but that's not really the point.) With the complete game tree, you can basically do anything you want.

          Essentially this algorithm has been used to solve simpler games: tic-tac-toe (you should try it; it's not that hard to do, actually), Connect-Four, etc.

          However, in our universe it is infeasible to solve chess this way. The algorithm is theoretically perfect, but chess has 10^123 states [etl.go.jp] and our Universe contains only 10^81 atoms [prodigy.net]. I suppose you could store more than one bit per atom (the number of quarks is greater, and I guess you could manipulate their spins or something) but I think you need to store more than one bit of information per state also...in any case, devoting a significant portion of the Universe to this problem is not feasible. In fact, there might be a formal proof somewhere that this is impossible, based on thermodynamics/entropy calculations.

          So if chess is solved, it will be through a different way.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • (Although white to win has been proven)

        Did I miss something, or is this entirely false? Just because moving first *seems* to give an advantage, does not mean that white must win. There is much scope for draws in chess, often when one player seems to have an advantage. I don't know if this problem has been seriously attacked, finding the solution by solving chess is certainly far from computationally feasible.

        What may be a more realistic and quite interesting problem is proving that white can at least draw (ie black can't force a win). A black win is considered highly unlikely and may be vulnerable to some sort of (complicated) strategy-stealing proof.

    • Re:Artificial Intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)

      by isomeme ( 177414 ) <cdberry@gmail.com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:10PM (#5322683) Journal
      The key fact to recognize is that the strength of a chess program (or any game-playing program) is a function of two variables -- depth of analysis and quality of position evaluation.

      With sufficiently great depth of analysis, all potential moves could be projected through all paths leading to a win for one side or the other. As such, a full-depth evaluator doesn't need a position evaluator, since evaluating whether a given position is a win is trivial.

      Conversely, a perfect position evaluator would remove the need for deep analysis of lines of play. Simply examine all the potential moves, and make the one leading to the best position. This is far closer to what human masters do; studies have shown that they tend to look only two or three moves ahead in terms of explicit individual positions, relying instead on a gestalt of what constitutes a strong position and moving so as to achieve one.

      So, while modern hardware and coding techniques have allowed us to search much deeper game trees (and thereby to improve computers' chess abilities markedly), we're still lagging on position evaluation, which is the key to how humans play chess. In other words, computer chess is taking just the opposite approach to chess as do humans. This isn't wrong or misguided, but it does help show why computer chess doesn't have much to contribute to "AI" in the strong sense of that term.
      • No, potential moves could not "be projected through all paths leading to a win for one side or the other." Not unless you are willing to wait longer than the age of the universe. You simply have no idea how many different combinations there are. Suffice to say, a computer in our universe will never be built that can calculate all the paths from the first move on. Not unless we change the laws of physics.
      • It depends on whether by "'AI' in the strong sense of the term" you mean:
        • Ability to perform tasks generally considered to require "intelligence" at a level meeting or exceeding the performance of skilled humans
        • Ability to perform these tasks in the same way humans do

        The second one seems to be what you're focusing on, but it's not clear that it's really necessary for a computer to reason in the same way as a human to be properly considered intelligent (any more than it's necessary for a plane to flap its wings for us to say that it's "really" flying).
        • Yep, or Schank's famous remark that asking whether computers can think is like asking whether submarines can swim. But that is indeed what I meant by "'AI' in the strong sense" -- the reproduction of something which is intelligent in the same senses in which we use the word to apply to ourselves.

          It is interesting to note that the depth vs. position-evaluation split mirrors similar number-crunching-vs.-gestalt issues hampering robotics and AI currently; it remains astounding but true that a computer can easily render a near-photorealistic scene based on a hideously complex internal model, but cannot yet tell you reliably whether there is an apple tree in that scene.

    • I have a similar discussion here [slashdot.org].

      It's not so simple. But Kasparov said something more in the article:

      In game five of my match with Deep Junior it played an imaginative sacrifice of the type generally considered impossible for a computer player. It was a landmark moment for computer chess and the science and programmers behind it.

      THAT looks to me is closer to thinking than pure raw computing power.

      Anyway, I don't think that could be fair to map all possible chess moves, even if it can be done, at least for a chess player program. A bigger challenge is to have a program that actually play well, creatively, not just "the best next move because I have all the game mapped". If computers ever learn to think, this could be one of the ways to achieve it.

      Oh, about "just a little game", you are just another human, slashdot is just another internet site, internet is just another network, life is just another way to organize matter and energy. In its own way, all of this are very important, maybe even the most important thing in the universe. Chess, that little game, have a very high amount of complexity packed in a small board, a few pieces and relatively simple rules... and there is the beauty of it.

  • Rrrrevenge? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by saikou ( 211301 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:47PM (#5322571) Homepage
    I think part of his bitterness against IBM is because he could not have his revenge. Computer won, and he had no chance to try it again. Vanity, of course, did not let him make an offer to buy that multi-million dollar supercomputer to learn how it works and play with it again and again.

    I guess he expected IBM to keep it forever for him to use :)

    It will be really interesting to see next version of Deep Junior(2/3/4/5/...) to work on something like pocket PC yet still be able to have a tie with champion :) Looks more impressive when itsy bitsy thing beats human, rather than huge set of mainframes...

    • to be fair (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Trepidity ( 597 )
      Deep Blue's designers did get to analyze hundreds of Kasparov's past games, so you can't really consider it unfair for Kasparov to want the opportunity to play it multiple times to get the same sort of experience with his opponent that the computer had.

      Apart from that, it simply would've made for good science to allow some more rigorous analysis of how and why the computer won. As it was, it seems almost like it was either a fluke, or it was a legitimate win, but in a hackish way that they're ashamed to show.
    • I always thought IBM should have put Deep Blue on the net.

      It could have had it's own website where people could queue up for games and watch others play it 24/7.

      Pretty soon DB would have a record of 10,000-6-0, the average game length would be 12 moves....

  • Whine of the day (Score:2, Insightful)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 )
    (Note, viewing options require both site registration with x3dworld and proprietary Microsoft software.)

    This is not so bad. I mean, there is a reason why Slashdot won't release browser statistics. I suspect most people who read (and a sizeable majority of those who post) here use Windows anyway.

    So don't worry about us. We can take it. Use the privilege of getting an article submitted to expound on the subject, not push your ideology on everyone else.

  • when computer consistently beats human in chess... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:54PM (#5322592)
    it want make computer any more intelligent than tic-tac-toe machine. instead at that point, the chess will cease to be a game and will become an algorithm.

  • Is he saying that they cheated? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SlashdotLemming ( 640272 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @07:55PM (#5322603)
    The only exception is when Deep Blue showed a stroke of genius in one game (when I suspected certain interference).

    Is he implying that the Deep Blue team cheated? Combine the above with his other comments about how quickly IBM abandoned the project after the victory and it seems so. Anyone have more info on this?
    • Yes, Kasparov is very public about this. He think the Blue team cheated, that a human overrode the computer at key places.

    • Re:Is he saying that they cheated? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by greppling ( 601175 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:09PM (#5323160)
      First: A basic thing that non-chess players might not know is that a human aided by a computer, or a computer aided by a human, is far superior to both humans and computers. (Btw, I think this is a very intersting fact itself.)

      There were some suspicions that Deep Blue had human "intervention". For a long article (by a journalist probably close to Kasparov), see Kasparov vs Deep Blue - Unanswered Questions [worldchessrating.com].

      Basically, it is argued that Deep Blue made some pretty uncharacteristic moves for a computer, rejecting variation with short-term gain but unclear result, that should look dangerous to a human, but good to a computer.

      I don't believe this reasoning. Chess programs have surprised us often enough, and especially since there was so little known about Deep Blue, it is hard to say what would have been a typical Deep Blue move in those positions.

      On the other hand, IBM could have silenced by just offering full logs for download. And they haven't done this.

      • First: A basic thing that non-chess players might not know is that a human aided by a computer, or a computer aided by a human, is far superior to both humans and computers. (Btw, I think this is a very intersting fact itself.)

        Interesting; didn't Bobby Fischer (rightly) think that his Russian opponent had a team of human advisors? If that's acceptable in tournament chess, you wonder why a human/computer wouldn't be...

  • I remain unimpressed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by isoteareth ( 321937 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:07PM (#5322666)
    I don't "get" the fascination people have with computers playing chess. Searching a game tree is not something I find overly impressive. The root problem (the tree searching algorithms and such) is somewhat interesting, but the computer isn't playing chess in the same way as a person. I don't really care how far down into a tree a modern processor has time to search. It doesn't indicate any sort of "intelligence" in the holy grail sense of AI. Chess is a very limited, structured problem.

    My calculator can find nth roots faster and with greater precision than I can...should I be fascinated by that as well?

    • The reason that computer chess fascinates so many people is exactly because brute force doesn't work. The possibilities are so enormous that you can't even begin to look at them all.

      In the most recent Man vs. Machine match, the computer was actually slower than Deep Blue. Yet it played amazingly good chess. Unfortunately Deep Blue isn't still around, so we can only speculate that Deep Junior is the superior program.

      Humans are slower still; MUCH slower. And yet we can, in many cases, play better chess than computers. The difference is that chess masters know instinctively which moves to consider while machines are stuck looking at a huge number of moves. The holy grail of chess AI would be to finally come up with program that can cut down the number of moves to consider just like the human brain can. Such a breakthrough would be a landmark achievement in AI and would have tons of practical applications outside of playing chess.

      I can agree with you on one point, though... chess "technology" probably puts too much effort into the game tree searching aspect of the problem.

      Most of the effort is being put towards better position evaluation algorithms, etc... In this way, chess programs are being improved by basically tweaking algorithms we already have and hard-coding in the programmer's own knowledge about the strategic value of certain positions. Things like "doubled pawns are bad" and "in a locked pawn structure a knight is worth more than a bishop".

      If we're going to make real progress we definitely need to move away from those approaches and start trying to get at the previously mentioned "holy grail" of chess. Brute-forcing human players to death shouldn't be the goal. We should instead focus on how the human mind approaches such an impossibly huge problem, and still manages to kick the computer's ass.

    • Re:I remain unimpressed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Nidoizo ( 263293 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @11:07PM (#5323385)

      I don't "get" the fascination people have with computers playing chess. Searching a game tree is not something I find overly impressive. The root problem (the tree searching algorithms and such) is somewhat interesting, but the computer isn't playing chess in the same way as a person. I don't really care how far down into a tree a modern processor has time to search. It doesn't indicate any sort of "intelligence" in the holy grail sense of AI. Chess is a very limited, structured problem.

      My calculator can find nth roots faster and with greater precision than I can...should I be fascinated by that as well?


      Don't take it personal, but your comment shows a lot of ignorance about chess AI. There's too much possible moves per turn in chess and I don't know of a chess program that calculates them all. Usually a program will calculate, let's say, around 10 moves. The job is there: evaluate the 10 best moves. Remember than even doing that, you still won't calculate very further. Suppose 10 moves per turn, one for black, one for white, it makes 100 moves per turn for both players. For only 7 complete turns you have to calculate 100,000,000,000,000 moves. It means your algorithm to evaluate positions needs to be very good, since, for example for a sacrifice, you only see calculable benefits after many more turns, sometime only in final.

      Like Kasparov, I very impressed to see a machine making an intelligent sacrifice; this is usually how you trap a computer. There's no doubt to me that Kasparov is still superior to any machine, but when machines begin to show some interesting moves, they begin to teach something. I'm a chess player and I understand chess enough to consider it an art. I can see emotions or genius in a game the same way some see it in painting. A big part of music is mathematical and if we're wise enough to build programs that create innovative chess games, maybe we can build some that create good melodies, who knows. I understand it may sound wierd for non-chess players to compare chess with an art, but creating a melody is also "a very limited, structured problem" and no one doubt it's an art. The main difference is that chess has a clear and easy to measure result. I don't think is "the holy grail sense of AI", but it is an important milestone in AI, no doubt for me.

      Regards,

      Nicolas Fleury

  • The New Challenge (Score:5, Funny)

    by pjdoland ( 99640 ) <pjdoland.pjdoland@com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:07PM (#5322668) Homepage
    I'll be truly impressed when a computer can show the creativity necessary to beat Bobby Fischer at developing crackpot political theories.
  • Call their methods, arguments and practices shoddy, shady, and sketchy.

    This sounds like a whine to me. He's pissed that he didn't win, but it's OK, since its "for science".

    -1, Crap

  • View the games with Javascript (Score:5, Informative)

    by product byproduct ( 628318 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:16PM (#5322713)
    The submitter didn't scour the web properly. You can view the games with professional commentaries with nothing more than a Javascript enabled browser at these links:

    Amir Ban annotation [chessbase.com]
    Karsten Müller et al [chessbase.com]

  • Take that IBM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by njord ( 548740 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:17PM (#5322716)

    Kasparov really socks it to IBM in that article. I'm surprised at this reaction, considering that they probably paid him a LOT of money to go toe-to-toe with Deep Blue.

    On the other hand, it was pretty shallow of IBM to barely beat Kasparov, brag about it, and then DISMANTLE the historic machine! Considering the would-be artifact status of Deep Blue, I would have expected more from these people.

    At any rate, I'm just glad to see that the brute force approach is being abandoned for better heuristics. Anyone can write minimax for chess, the only special that IBM did was dump a couple million into hardware.

    njord

  • Shay Bushinsky (Score:5, Informative)

    by jbs666 ( 151638 ) <jbs666@yahoo.com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:17PM (#5322723) Homepage
    Chessbase has an interesting interview with Shay Bushinsky [chessbase.com], one of the programmers of Junior.

  • Big deal, I've played against Deep Blue as well (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sailesh ( 34167 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:29PM (#5322776)
    Heh .. seriously. Back in November 1996 the IBM Research guys exhibited DeepBlue at the IBM CasCon conference in Toronto. They had the program play a "top Canadian GM" and it dutifully defeated him. It was an exhibit in the demo section and anybody could play against it. While it was the very same software it was on a much slower RS/6000 hardware. I played against it, and of course got defeated very soon. I think around 17 moves but I don't recall correctly. This was after the Philadelphia match that Kasparov won 4-2 but before the rematch that was marred by controversy. The IBM guys said that on game 1 they had somehow or the other omitted to bring the "opening book" and had to ftp it over a slow connection. They only got it in time for game 2. Still believe Deep Blue won game 1 ! Apparently Kasparov was shaken and then walked the streets of Philadelphia all night long and promptly won the next game. http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/watch/html/c. 10.html As an IBMer (although I joined IBM about 1.5 years since) and a chess fan I am disappointed that the team refused to open up the project to more scrutiny. I still hope and believe that there was nothing inappropriate.

  • /. interview (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:56PM (#5322906) Homepage Journal
    Hey guys, see if you can get Gary to consent to an interview on /.

    I know the question I would ask:

    Given that "they" say computers own the opening and the endgame, while masters own the middle, what would you think of a match up of 2 chess programs and 2 grand masters (yourself being one) - with the computers to advise, but the master to make the final decision? Who would you want to play against (man and machine), and what program would you choose to be your assistant?

    • Re:/. interview (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BSDevil ( 301159 )
      I think I can say with pretty good authority that he'd say no to this. Given any situation, when you have two people/things who beleive that they are very good at something trying to work together, neither is very interested in the other's advice. Each beleives they are superior, and as such, they follow their opinion.

      Another reason I don't think this idea would work deals with the long-term nature of chess. When selecting a move, you plan out that move as a preface to a series of other moves. I'm not sure which would be more difficult: having man explain its long-term strategy to the machine, or the other way around. Chess also deals with the individual style of the player; their school of Chess will influence how they play. If you reformulate this question as "Would two grandmasters play in partnership with one another against another pair, bearing in mind that the grandmasters can only communicate on slips of paper," then the answer becomes clearer. And yes, given that Deep Blue did beat a grandmaster, I think we can call him ("it?") one, for sake of argument.

      Although I do think it would be kinda cool to get Kasparov on here in the hot seat; not really to discuss his match with Deep Blue, but more see his take on the impact of powerful machines on society, from the point of view of someone has to compete for his livelyhood against them.

    • Re:/. interview (Score:2, Informative)

      by sailesh ( 34167 )
      Actually this is not new. This is called "Advanced Chess". There was an Advanced Chess tournament held a couple years back and all the Super GMs (> 2700 rating) competed. I believe that Vishy Anand won it. Basically however it left people kinda cold. Let me also be a karma whore: http://www.chessbase.com/events/events.asp?pid=133 [slashdot.org]

    • Re:/. interview (Score:3, Interesting)

      by YeeHaW_Jelte ( 451855 )
      Yeah, that'd be great. I'd like to ask him if and what special tactics he uses when playing computers. I figure he studies his opponents previous games, regardless of whether his opponent is a man or a machine, but how would his preparations be different when preparing to play a computer?
  • Don't be taken in by Kasparov's noble words about "scientific" study of computer chess. There are two ways to think about a man vs. machine chess match:

    A scientific test. Everybody's preparations would be done openly. There would be joint post-game analysis with an emphasis on whose strategy worked better.

    A sporting test. Everybody's preparations would be done in secret, to hopefully surprise the opposition. Post-game analysis would be done seperately by both sides, with spin thrusters fully engaged.

    Kasparov does competitive chess for a living - he can't approach these games in a scientific quest-for-knowledge mode. Note that he gets paid competition rates for these games.

    What he clearly wants is for him to be able to treat the computer teams as full-out adversaries, but for them to cooperate with him and give away anything they discover about chess. That way, they can't become a threat to him or his sport.

  • Fischer Random Chess (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jayson ( 2343 ) <jnordwick.gmail@com> on Tuesday February 18, 2003 @12:23AM (#5323708)
    So as computers slowly overtake the best players, will Fischer random chess draw more attention. In this randomc chess variation, the inital piece configuration is randomly determined (within certain parameters to make it still have some of the same strategic elements of chess) and the same for both players (much as the way it is will regular chess). Bobby Fischer developed it to get rid of the the opening advantage the is gained with massive studying and memorization. It basically eliminates the idea of an opening sequence since there are thousands of different initial boards. However, good opening principles still dominate (piece development, king protection, pawn structure, etc).

    I think it is a great idea. It also leaves a huge advantage for good master level players over machines, since an opening book is virtually eliminated.

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