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Chess Championship: Humans vs. Computer 309

Posted by timothy from the invaders-in-the-human-castle dept.
An anonymous reader writes "X-bit labs has posted very interesting editorial called "Chess Championship: Humans vs. Computer". During the last 10 years computers penetrated into various spheres of human life. In this article guys try to find out how well computers can play chess and if it would be correct to say that artificial intelligence is superior to human mind. Interesting read."
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Chess Championship: Humans vs. Computer

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  • Chessmaster 8000 always beats me as is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:03AM (#5889068)
    at least Chessmaster can't post on ./ how it beat me 5 times in a row.

  • Interesting, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:06AM (#5889078) Homepage Journal
    I don't know if chess playing really qualifies as AI. The game gets broken down numerically such that the computer's job is just to crunch through the myriad possible moves and select the best one. All the intelligence goes into the algorithm that rates various positions, and the calculation scheme by which possibilities are evaluated, which are the human inputs. It just sounds like too narrowly focused a task to be considered AI.

    • Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DavidpFitz ( 136265 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:19AM (#5889120) Homepage Journal
      I agree with you. After studying AI as an undergrad for 4 years, I came to the conclusion that carrying out well defined tasks is not a subject matter for AI. Chess rules are extremely well defined, and as such all that is being carried out is a search - this is not AI.

      Learning to understand English is altogether different -- Language has a very complex set of very loosely defined rules which change over time, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Understanding English is very much an AI task.

      The problem is knowedge, and how it should be represented -- with Chess you just need a big calculator and present as much of the game (projected) as possible. There is no such way to do this with language... a much more complex representation with much more hueristic knowledge is required, and this is where AI starts coming in. Natural language processing is a very tricky field, one which I won't even pretend I understand, and in my opinion nobody quite does... Chomsky probably coming closest, but then again I'd disagree with him on many points!!

      D.

      • AI != Thinking like a human being, imitating a human being, etc.

        AI has many branches, several of which are applied AI and have to do with having a computer do some complicated task. Whether or not the computer is thinking should be seperated from whether or not we're talking about AI.

        If this article is about how computers may be becoming more intelligent then human beings, then they weren't paying attention when Deep Blue first beat Kasparov. No one at IBM ever said: "Behold, the first intelligent comp

    • The problem with your argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nigel.selke ( 665251 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:26AM (#5889144) Homepage
      Every time technology advances, the definition of what tasks can be said to require "true intelligence" changes. For example, before the advent of calculating machines, arithmetic was considered something that was uniquely human. Now, people dismiss computers' abilities to do lightning fast arithmetic, and, in fact, use it as a basis for putting down other abilities of computers/other high technology ("But that all comes down to number crunching. It's not true intelligence.").

      Of course, you (and they) could be right about it. But it's interesting to note that chess is another prime example of this. Computers became extremely good at number crunching and large-scale analysis, and people shrugged it off. "A computer would never be able to compete with competent chess player, and could certainly never compete with a Grandmaster. Chess requires true human intelligence." 20 years later, a computer tied with the reigning Chess Champion. Now - Chess doesn't really require true intelligence, it all boils down to number crunching.

      The problem is, where do we draw the line? As computers start adding more and more to their lists of abilities, especially in areas such as pattern recognition and expert systems, are we going to claim that those things don't require intelligence, and can also all be brought down to number crunching? To me, it seems like a form of denial. Instead of clinging to the old ways, why not recognize that computers might just be better at a lot of things that we previously thought were "human-only" areas of skill, and adapt accordingly.

      • Re:The problem with your argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:52AM (#5889199) Journal
        You make a good point -- in the end, regardless how advanced the AI is, it might all boil down to number crunching, just like it all boils down to chemical reactions in a brain.
        • Personally I wouldn't say that it all boils down to chemical reactions in the brain. That may be the process responsible for thought, conciousness, and memory, but the neural paths must first be established in order for intelligent conclusions to be reached. Remember, the engine's oil is only a fraction of the engine's function. It's 'what's inside' that really matters. (ack, no pun intended)

          Geekily enough, the main character in Ghost in the Shell pondered this same point after emerging from a dive.
          • Well, swap "electrochemical" for "chemical" and I think it may well cover the neural paths you're talking about. And yeah, those neural paths have to be established, but there's nothing mystical about it, it's just very diffucult to understand.
      • The problem is, where do we draw the line?

        1) Make a computer with true free will. Let's see AI do something it wasn't originally designed to do because it wants to.

        2) "True intelligence", at least on par with us, will happen when a computer does everything we do mentally, while having full articulate motor skills, and then takes it upon itself to create an AI that crunches numbers better than it does, beats itself at chess, etc.

        The full-circle of AI doing everything we do will be "true intelligenc

        • Re:The problem with your argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Kynde ( 324134 ) <kynde@@@iki...fi> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:41AM (#5889295)
          1) Make a computer with true free will. Let's see AI do something it wasn't originally designed to do because it wants to.

          How would you measure that? Especially if you knew that in the it boiled down to number crunching with some entropy input. You do remember that the concept of free will is meaningful only subjectively, i.e. from one's own point of view.
          Although it is widely held that among human kind if one has it then all do, but that does not apply to AI.


          2) "True intelligence", at least on par with us, will happen when a computer does everything we do mentally, while having full articulate motor skills, and then takes it upon itself to create an AI that crunches numbers better than it does, beats itself at chess, etc.

          Bollocks, the earlier poster said it well. We're just drawing the line further and further, mostly because what we're after is that "well, err, when they're like us" while all along we're not quite sure what that means.

          Moreover, the planes is infested with actual human beings that would fail on either of those.

          Besides both of your points there are unscientific, neither of which can be measured in any way. That's all there really is to it though. Milestones. Wether a person qualifies that as AI is subjective to the definition of AI, for which here in /. I'm guessing are a myriad of different interpretations.

          There are a number of good well defined tests that we can put the AI through, every one of those passed is significant. Especially the forementioned arithmetics and chess should NOT be forgotten, because they indeed were once held high.
        • 1) Make a computer with true free will. Let's see AI do something it wasn't originally designed to do because it wants to.

          The problem is that philosphers/psycologists/neurologists/genome scientists are debating since centuries if and in what magnitude this sentence is true when you replace computer and AI with man.

          • Man wasn't originally designed to post to slashdot ... though only because slashdot did not exist at the time, and needed to be created by man first.

            And was man created to create Slashdot? While CmdrTaco and CowgirlNeal might think so, I somehow doubt it. :)

        • Re:The problem with your argument. (Score:5, Funny)

          by slimak ( 593319 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @07:13AM (#5889659)
          Haven't you been watching any scifi movies in the past couple of decades? As I have, I can tell you that this is a very bad idea. Once the computers can do things we don't indend, the will either

          1) attempt to destroy us
          2) enslave us
          3) sell us on ebay

          we have seen time and time again that AI is pure evil and no good can come of it.
        • Let's see AI do something it wasn't originally designed to do because it wants to.

          This is sort of a tangent, but how would an AI decide what it "wants to" do? How do we decide what we "want to" do? We are given goals and desires by instinct, really. But, you can't logically derive what is right or wrong, or what is desirable or not. Thus, the creator of the AI has to give it a goal, and it is exactly that which the AI will "want to" do.

          This is a mistake humans seem to make a lot. We seem to expect t
      • But chess *really* does not need any intelligence if you have enough computing power. You can be either (a) intelligent with low computing skills --- human or (b) dumb, but with excellent computing skills --- computer.

        Only our insufficient computing power makes chess the nice game that requires intelligence.

        Computers don't enjoy playing chess, it's a routine <g>
      • Exactly.
        And since philophers and other scientists are not dumb, they even go to the root of the problem in advance.
        Searle's chinese room theory is a prime example for this IMO, you could use this reasoning to rip apart _anything_ which will come out of AI science. Note that I don't think that AI today is able to resemble anything which will really master a turing test, but even if it did, the chinese room argument will offer a way to argue that the computer "doesn't really understand what he is talking."
        I f
      • I guess the line is where we do not have to directly tell the computer what to do.

        And people who said that "Chess requires true human intelligence." meant that chess played like by a human requires human intelligence. And it does. But the deep searching performed by a chess-playing computer does not resemble that. It really does not require anything but following the steps carefully written down by its programmers - so yes, it's still not intelligence, it's just the execution of an algorithm.

      • Re:The problem with your argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by platypus ( 18156 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:51AM (#5889436) Homepage
        To add another example. Richard Feynman writes in one of his books about how he listened to a conversation between to students of mathematics(at MIT or so) where one tried to explain some mathematical concept to the other.
        Feynman described that after a long while and much intense explaining, finally the other student "got it", and said something along the lines of "Oh! YES, THAT'S TRIVIAL!"
        Feynman goes on to make fun of mathematicians by proposing that mathematicians only understand trivial problems, because anything they have already understood is declared trivial by them.

        This is a bit extreme, but it decribes exactly the notion some AI critics seem to have when judging AI advances.

        • What you have here is really the crux of the definition problem. AI will not be considered AI until a machine is able perform an act of mental dexterity for which we do not have an explanation (not very likely). You see, as soon as we have a perfect understanding of how a mental process was carried out, we no longer consider that process to be an act of intelligence but simply a mechanical routine. The changes we have witnessed in the definition of intelligence really point out what the very definition o

          • Re:The problem with your argument. (Score:4, Insightful)

            by platypus ( 18156 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @09:51AM (#5891004) Homepage
            OTOH, there's an interesting short story in one of Hofstaedter's (spelling right? to lazy to look up) books where one guy build mechanical "bugs" which could express very simple "emotions" - i.e. making some pet like noises, making noises of fear, crawinling around etc. - and he asks a visitor to smash one bug with a hammer. The story describes how this man wasn't emotionally able to do that, because he developed feelings for this bug.
            (IIRC the real story is somewhat more involved, but you get the idea).

            I bet if you decorated an "intelligent" AI with some emotional dressing, you could significantly lower the barrier to accept it as "intelligent".

            Shows how deeply involved the human perception of not only intelligence, but life in general is.

      • Hey, good posting! It's nice to see a decent argument get made on Slashdot.
      • I used to think getting a hot chick was a matter of uniquely human qualities too, but as I grow older and wiser it's more & more obvious that it's ultimately just a matter of number crunching.

        Don't make me haul out Rick Okasek, Lyle Lovett, and Billy Joel as proof.

    • So what is considered AI? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bombula ( 670389 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @06:49AM (#5889587)
      It's one thing to know what something isn't; it's quite another to know what it is. I think it's clear that running a search and performing arithmetic are functions to simple to have emergent properties resembling intelligence. So then what properties would have to emerge? What are the properties of intelligence?

      In my admittedly ignorant view, intelligence largely boils down to three closely related things:

      1. Noise filtration.

      Humans and animals - even simple ones - can prioritize what sensory input to process. This is how we pick objects out of the background visually, sonically, and - in humans - abstractly from conceptual landscapes.

      2. Pattern recognition.

      Correctly identifying patterns within chaotic data streams are where biological computers (brains) excel, thanks probably to massively parallel processing and phenomenally well designed algorithms courtesy of natural selection. Listening to one person's voice in a crowd requires both (a) ignoring all other sound, and (b)correctly identifying and processing the relevant data coming in, including information about context. Current Voice Recognition technology, for example, is poor despite massive number crunching because algorithms for noise filtering and pattern recognition are crude. Note also that pattern recognition is 4-dimensional: we recognize things in motion, not just standing still (read "behavior").

      3. Information inference.

      Current software doens't allow computers to handle a lack of data very well. If information is missing, brains fill in the gaps and make inferences efficiently and effectively. Sometimes this goes wrong, as when you mistakenly think you see something out of the corner of your eye. But mostly we get this right, hence the brain's accurate and effortless construction of motion from still frames flashed 24 times per second on a movie screen.

      A simple test of these qualifiers is anticipation. When software can filter noise, recognize patterns, and infer information well enough to demonstrate the faculty of anticipation, then we will be making steps towards genuine AI.

      • Douglas R. Hofstadter points out one crucial you missed, and he thinks it might be crucial for AI: slippery thinking, the power of analogy, the ability to realize this situation is "like" this other situation. It's a crucial variation of "pattern recognition" that lets us apply past experience to novel situations, and it's something that machines aren't particularly good at yet.

  • Of course not (Score:5, Informative)

    by mondoterrifico ( 317567 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:07AM (#5889081) Journal
    All strong chess programs use Shannon type A searching which is basically an alpha beta search with some refinements like null move pruning.

    Now it is possible to make what are called Shannon type B programs, which try and mimic what humans do. Unfortunately they suck, like most of real AI.

    • Re:Of course not (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zutroy ( 542820 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:14AM (#5889103) Homepage
      Real AI does not suck. The problem with "real AI" is that every time it actually works, it gets redefined into something that is no longer "real AI." Take Voice Recognition. It used to be a pipe dream; now you can buy ViaVoice for less than $50 and get extremely accurate results. And neural nets can recognize faces with astonishing accuracy.

      Sure, a computer can't pass the Turing test yet, but we're getting there, and once we do, people will complain that it isn't "real AI" either.

    • Re:Of course not (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quigonn ( 80360 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:20AM (#5889126) Homepage
      I've seen a presentation on the 19th Chaos Communication Congress [www.ccc.de] about "artificial intelligence" in chess. The lecturer analyzed the games of Kramnik vs. this Deep foo computer. He also explained how chess computers can be beaten. Today's chess computers take the first 20 moves from a database. Then computers also take the moves from a database when there are only 5 chessmen on the chessboard. So the only "art" is to beat the computer somewhere between, where the computer's moves are not perfect.
      • Hate to break it to you, but that's not just computers you're talking about - grandmasters play if not 20 then 5-15 moves from memory of openings, and can play small endgames perfectly (of course it never gets to a tiny endgame as soon as the outcome is clear)

      • Re:Of course not (Score:5, Interesting)

        by andi75 ( 84413 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:37AM (#5889290) Homepage
        Actually, that's only true for the endgames. The computer's play there is perfect (assuming the database isn't corrupted). The same isn't true for the opening database, which is essentially just a large collection of games from (mostly) human players.

        The variations are all 'computer checked' of course, to filter the more obvious human blunders in these games, but there's almost no chess opening out there who's evaluation hasn't fluctuated over the last decade. The chess world constantly watches the top rated players choice of varations in their games, and popularity of openings can change quickly, when new poisons/antidotes are discovered.

        So, if you know the computer's database isn't completely up-to-date, you might find a way to lure it into a varation who's evaluation has changed recently.

        - Andreas

  • two sides (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John_Renne ( 176151 ) <<ten.swueinleffing> <ta> <iooz>> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:11AM (#5889092) Homepage
    Of course a computer will beat humans when it comes to storing past games in memory. That's without any doubt. A computer however will never be able to beat a humans creativity.

    When I read articles like this I allways remember the matrix. Morpheus told Neo agents will always be bound by the rules they are programmed with. Real humans could bend these rules.
    • Not really true. Humans are, after all, programmed with rules. They're just very complex rules. Our brain does operate within the laws of physics, however, so it is theoretically possible to simulate a human mind completely within a computer. That computer would then be just as intelligent as a human.

      A couple years ago I heard about a "creative" program designed to come up with advertisements. It came up with a bunch of neat ideas. For example, for a tennis match in India it suggested showing an imag
      • Not really true. Humans are, after all, programmed with rules. They're just very complex rules. Our brain does operate within the laws of physics, however, so it is theoretically possible to simulate a human mind completely within a computer. That computer would then be just as intelligent as a human.

        I have to reply to this: Not really true!
        Read about quantuum physics. There doesn't really exist any "elementary particles", they are manifest from quantuum waves of probability. Heissenbergs uncertainty pri
        • I have to reply to this: Not really true!
          Read about quantuum physics. There doesn't really exist any "elementary particles", they are manifest from quantuum waves of probability. Heissenbergs uncertainty principle also states it is _theoretically_ impossible to measure the universe accurately. A good classic is "The Tao of Physics", read it and open up your mind.

          I didn't say it was possible to measure a real human brain to put it into the simulation. I said it was possible to simulate a human brain. We'
    • Hmm except the "agents" are agents of the entities that make (and can therefore chnage) the rules, so the rules are of no consequence to them. A pretty big hole in the plot if you ask me!

      Consider Quake practice bots though - a good player can measure their success against these as the rate at which they can reap them - not whether they win or not. But against another good human opponent - it's a different game. Sneakiness becomes a factor :)
  • Chess as a problem is way too narrow. Chess program definitely doesn't qualify as an AI. It's just a rather complex mathematical problem that requires some advanced routines to tackle. As pure 'math' solution is WAY too large to calculate, you need some shortcuts and optimizations, but such techniques do not imply that the program is in some way 'intelligent'. Computer chess programs still lack creativity, but since chess as a problem is narrow enough, brute force can beat human creativity in most cases.

  • The "human mind" is not one thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:12AM (#5889098) Journal
    Any more than the "human body" is a single thing. When the first cars were invented, people agonized that when a car could move faster than a man, we would all become slaves to a mechanic intelligence. The same happens each time we create an artificial implementation of any aspect of ourselves.

    The "human mind" is not a chess-playing machine. I can't play chess at all... does this make me less human than a hand-held computer?

    Focussing on single aspects like this is mastabatory piddling, a complete waste of time, and entirely illucidating when it comes to decomposing the meaning (if any) of AI.

    The human mind is, like the human body it is part of, a set of tools each adapted for specific tasks. While we feel that the tools which compose our "intellect" are somehow special (more so, say, than our ability to remember images, or open beer bottles), this is obviously subjective. Each of our mental tools is special, and the full set are somewhat magical, but chess playing machines we are most definitely not.

    Oh, and yes, the day will come when we have implemented every single one of our precious mental tools, including the hall of mirrors we call "the conscious mind". And then...? The banal fact is that the cheapest and most effective way to get all these into a package that can also open a beer bottle is to make more humans, not expensive imitations.

  • Memory vs Genius vs Innovation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chthonicdaemon ( 670385 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:12AM (#5889099) Homepage Journal
    When I was younger, I refused to read and learn because I thought that I was just 'using' authors to gain insight that should have been able to figure out on my own. In chess, we don't expect GMs to be given a chess board and reach their level of play without studying opening books, etc. There is allways an interplay of Memory vs Innovation in Genius. True Genius is therefore the combination of the two, and as more innovation moves into memory, true genius sees the new gaps for innovation at the edges of knowledge.

    Of course, the larger your knowledge, the bigger the edge and the more gaps you can see. In the end, no technology can make true genius obsolete. We no longer think that someone who understands Newton's theories is gifted. And if all possible combinations on the chessboard are finally published and someone can memorise it all (just by saying it, I know it will happen), a new game will emerge that can challenge the new intellectuals.

  • as someone wise said (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gTsiros ( 205624 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:15AM (#5889106)
    whose name i do not remember,
    the question if a computer can play chess is as valid as the question if a submarine swims.

  • AI surpassing the human mind (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zutroy ( 542820 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:17AM (#5889109) Homepage
    If AI ever does surpass the human mind, how will we judge it? If we can't comprehend the logic behing the results, won't we just assume that the computer is acting irrationally?
    • Right on. Mod parent up. This is like the mind of God and all that. Our concept of intelligence is very centered on examples of intelligence in other humans. Religious dudes often explain God by saying 'Oh, we can't understand what God does'. Maybe one day we'll be saying to our children 'Oh, Johnny, we can't understand what HAL does'.
    • The thing about logic is that it's a sequence of (basically) mathematical operations.

      We may not be able to work our way through the steps a superior mind does as fast, but we'd still be able to get there eventually if it was written down.
    • Well, once AI surpasses the human mind, the first thing it will do is create new AI that further surpasses the human mind. That, in turn, will do the same, and each iteration will be faster and smarter. Soon, the AI will be so far beyond us that we could not ever comprehend it. However, it will all happen so fast we won't notice.

      Hopefully, the first AI will have been programmed with the goal of maximizing the total happiness of all living things, with an emphasis on humans. Then, when that AI with an I

  • Chess and AI (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:17AM (#5889112)


    IMO computer chess isn't very interesting from the AI perspective these days. Deep Blue wins because it's fast enough to search enough plys ahead to give a good score to each move. Beyond that it's about as clever as a sorting algorithm.

    Does anyone know of a chess AI that doesn't rely on deep searches? Some kind of heuristic or learned polic that maps the current board state directly onto a preferred move?

    Or something that relies on some kind of 'reasoning' rather than blindly summing up predefined scores and picking the option with the the biggest sum?

    Or something based on machine learning?

  • chess != AI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tigress ( 48157 ) <rot13.fcnzgenc03@8in.net> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:18AM (#5889115)
    The game of Chess is not a measure of intelligence. It's a measure of mathematics and memory. A computer is no smarter if it's able to play chess than one that isn't.

    The reason for this is that Chess is a game where the rules are strictly defined. For each move, there can only be a limited - and known - number of outcomes. This reduces the entire game to a matter of mathematics and statistics.

    No, the real test of intelligence would be for a computer to react to and handle a situation where the rules are NOT predefined - such as a real world scenario.

    When a computer is able to take a limited number of inputs and make a judgement based on the (possibly) inaccurate and (definitely) insufficient data available, you can start talking about intelligence. Still, even then you're not talking about true intelligence. AND, for that matter, such programs do exist - they're called expert systems.

    No, what I'm prepared to call intelligence is a program that not only is able to make a judgement based on possibly bad data, but is also prepared to admit that it made a mistake and learn from those mistakes. That would, in my opinion, be a truly intelligent program.

    After all, assuming it's able to do that, it'd certainly be a lot more intelligent than a lot of humans I know. =)

    • Re:chess != AI (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zutroy ( 542820 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:22AM (#5889133) Homepage
      In a situation where there aren't predefined rules, how does a human react?

      We judge what the situation most resembles from our experience, and we react accordingly. We act like a case-based learning AI program. We use heuristics to weight our decisions...we just call our heuristics "common sense."

      Computers act more like humans, and humans act more like computers, than many people are comfortable to admit. Computers just don't have the mechanisms to experience as wide a variety of stimuli as us.

      Take a look at the work of Douglas Hofsteader (sp?). His book, "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," shows relatively simple programs demonstrating surprisingly human-like behaviors.

      • Very good point.

        The thing is though, to use a cliché, we learn from our mistakes. A human is able to understand that it made a mistake. A computer is not. A computer merely observes the results and compares it to a - usually predefined or at least pre-seeded - set of parameters.

        • Re:chess != AI (Score:2, Interesting)

          by zutroy ( 542820 )
          Not to be disagreeable here, but I think that you're looking at this from too high of a level.

          What does "learning from mistakes" imply? Well, what is a mistake? It's when our plan of action failed to achieve its goal. A computer can easily simulate this, given a goal (that doesn't even have to be very well-defined).

          Say I want to drive to work. I have a choice of roads to go down. At first, they all seem equal to me, but eventually I learn which ones are heavily trafficked and which ones run smoothl

        • A human is able to understand that it made a mistake. A computer is not. A computer merely observes the results and compares it to a - usually predefined or at least pre-seeded - set of parameters.

          While this is technically true, I believe that as technology progresses and expert systems become more common and powerful, the level of detail (be it a 30-move look-ahead in chess or whatever) becomes greater. A computer can learn from its mistakes and compute which path would be more beneficial for _it_ rath

    • Re:chess != AI (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MnO-Raphael ( 601885 ) *
      The game of Chess is not a measure of intelligence. It's a measure of mathematics and memory

      True, but as Turing pointed out: if you can't tell the difference in a certain context, does it really matter if it's *really* intelligent or not?
      AI is a misplaced term - "adaptive systems" would fit much better. I too have a problem with calling something that doesn't even know it's playing chess for intelligent.

    • Re:chess != AI (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 )
      The game of Chess is not a measure of intelligence. It's a measure of mathematics and memory.

      But will intelligence for a computer EVER be anything else than mathemetics and memory?

      Will our brain EVER work in another fashion than sending chemical signals to our synapses?

  • The future of chess (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jonin893 ( 666637 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:18AM (#5889117)
    The First "Cyborg Championship"?
    Meanwhile, Garry Kasparov has arranged for an exhibition match with 23 year old GM Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria for June in which both players will have an (identical) laptop computer that they may consult during the games. The laptops will have databases preloaded by each player (therefore containing their own analysis and selections), as well as a tactical engine. Each game of the 6 game match will last only one hour, meaning that a large part of the strategy will be how much time spend on the computer! A number of analysts are calling this the "First 21st Century World championship" although of course it's only an exhibition.     (http://www.uschess.org/clife/issue47/buzz.html)
    It's from 1997, but I think they're right. The future does seem to be moving in that direction.

    I recall reading an interview with former world chapion karpov who said that when he was learning chess, his teacher said that one day it would all be computers. One of the other students said, "So why are we bothering to do this then?" and the coach replied, "My computer will beat your computer." or something like that. Pretty soon it'll all be down to which computer is better and which person can better control it. I'm sorry I can't better quote the interview. It was in the ChessLife about the Karpov v. Kasparov x3d match in Times Square in case anyone has it.

  • It's been said... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by _RidG_ ( 603552 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:19AM (#5889121)
    It's been said before, but before we talk about computers becoming superior to the human mind, how about creating an AI that's *equal* to the human mind?

    In other words, there's no point in talking about the future where computers rule supreme etc. if we still have no way for a computer to recognize, say, a table from a picture of a table if it does not comply with a series of previously-specified standards. I know it's a horrible analogy but jeez, it's 3:18 AM.

    ...Which reminds me. Why am I still up? *sighs* Damn you, caffeine.

  • Human V AI... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bazmonkey ( 555276 )
    ...if it would be correct to say that artificial intelligence is superior to human mind. Seeing as how it was our mind that created AI, somehow I just don't think so.

    You show me AI that takes it upon itself to create it's own AI that outperforms itself, then I'll concede. That's the mark of intelligence: having the capacity to create something more capable than yourself, and not only make it, but think it up.
  • Yes, but, can any AI write a human-biased article for a newspaper about the chessmatch it just observed? I don't think so! And if it can, it's a witch, and should be burned aliv^H^H^H^H^H.

    --

  • I hate it when people compare AI and human chess players and say the following three things:

    a) The computer cheats because it can evaluate more moves
    b) The computer cheats because it has "traps" and "100% win situations" programmed in
    c) The computer cheats because it has access to previous human games and can "guess" a player's strategy

    This might be true, but most grandmaster chess players have played thousands upon thousands of hours of chess. They can immediately rule out half the moves on the board as "stupid" or "unhelpful", and they themselves come with the special knowledge of having seen many, many board situations and having worked out their solutions.

    Chess is an interesting game because it is on the scale of infiniately complex.

    Computers also have a serious disadvantage: the players they play against are not computers, and therefore do not evaluate moves with the same algorithms. For instance, when Deep X makes his check he says, "I'm going to do this... and then... Kasparov might do that... and I might do this... and Kasparov might do that..." - all the while substituting in what he believes are probable moves for Kasparov based on his own algorithm. This may be disadvantageous because Kasparov may analyze a situation from a different perspective - and while this is a factor in EVERY chess game (human vs. computer or human vs. human) - it is important to note that the computer does not have the priviledge of analyzing the situation from these distinctly human perspectives.

  • Expert System, not AI (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MickyJ ( 188652 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:01AM (#5889219) Homepage Journal
    Chess playing software is an example of an expert system [techtarget.com], not a true AI system.

  • To test a powerful computer, play an ancient game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by igomaniac ( 409731 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:07AM (#5889230)
    The game of Go has proven to be incredibly hard to program, and is a much better indication of where artificial intelligence is today than the game of Chess.

    This article gives an introduction to the problems involved in getting computers to play Go:

    http://www.ishipress.com/times-go.htm [ishipress.com]

  • Ho-hum (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Malfourmed ( 633699 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:13AM (#5889242) Homepage
    Nobody got outraged when that new-fangled mechanical auto-mobile contraption started to outpace the world's fastest human runners. Yet a computer beating a grandmaster in chess was an apocalpytic event. As others have pointed out chess can be won by using a fairly unsophisticated brute force mathematical approach at which computers excel. It's really no big deal.

    I'm much more intrigued by developments in artificial creativity - poems, musical compositions, jokes, stories; where the rules governing the construction of these works are much more elusive. When a computer-generated novel wins the Booker Prize we'll have passed a signficant threshold.

    Or to come back to the chess comparison - if a computer programme which adopted a human approach to chess playing, eg calculating no more than three or four moves ahead rather than nine or ten, evaluating a dozen potential decision branches rather than thousands, beat a human grand master - that would be a more significant advance in AI.

    It would be like building a human-shaped robot which was able to out-run (not just outpace) a person, rather building a mechanical device which gets there by adopting an entirely different paradigm: wheels, not legs; brute force chess move evaluation, not (largely) intuitive leaps.

    • Nobody got outraged when that new-fangled mechanical auto-mobile contraption started to outpace the world's fastest human runners.

      Actually they did, and quite a bit, although in my opinion they shouldn't have, because for example horses (mounted or not) had outrun people for years.

    • Re:Ho-hum (Score:5, Interesting)

      by po8 ( 187055 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:01AM (#5889327)

      Nobody got outraged when that new-fangled mechanical auto-mobile contraption started to outpace the world's fastest human runners.

      Allow me to recommend to you the legend of John Henry [ibiblio.org]. About the time period you mention, too. I always mention this story in the Intro AI class I teach.

      • And here I've always thought "John Henry" was a synonym for "penis". (!)

        Fascinating site - thanks. I guess the thing I hadn't considered was human insecurity. In some ways, on a purely technical level, a machine outworking / outrunning / outcalculating a person is no big deal - if anything a tribute to human ingenuity.

        On the other hand if that machine is going to take away your livelihood (or, perhaps in the case of chess, your sense of superiority) it's a lot bigger deal.

  • Just think... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zutroy ( 542820 )
    Just think of the world's first conscious, intelligent computer claiming that we can't possibly be conscious because we're merely the products of neurons firing.
  • ......we would have computers that program themselves or understand what the user wants. At least this was once envisioned as well as flying cars by now.

    20 years ago it was assumed we would have computers find crimes before they happened as well as identify potential trouble teenagers before they enter highschool. It was assumed computers could do this because they could look at such complex patterns automatically and make decisions based on AI for us.

    Turns out humans are still making the decisions. Compu

  • Bollocks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by schnitzi ( 243781 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @05:05AM (#5889336) Homepage
    I was fairly engaged with this article (despite a little too much anthropomorphising of the results of deep computations) until the ridiculous conclusions at the end!

    Yeah, every chess program has a huge openings library to consult with, while a man has none.

    Baloney. A man is allowed to memorize as many openings as he wants, just as the computer has "memorized" them.

    Having found no other way to make the program good at endgame, program developers started feeding them databases of common endgames.

    Again, so? Humans are allowed to memorize as much endgame stuff as they want. Why should computers be disallowed this?

    The above-described matches were played between a man and a multi-processor machine. The processors were prompting to each other and exchanging ideas. This doesn't seem fair.

    Awwww... Why the hell not? Human brains aren't single processor; why should computer opponents have to be?

    Chess programs have a lot of memory at hand. It's like they have a million of chessboards to make moves on. And the human has none.

    The same fallacy, repeated over and over again. The human doesn't have none, he has as many as he cares to remember.

    If I were Kasparov or Kramnik, I would come to the match against the computer with my own board and played all variants on it. The PC can't see, you know.

    And if I were on the computer team, I'd let you. Knock yourself out! Go ahead and fiddle with your chessboard when you could be considering countless more positions in your head.

    All the games the computer won in the above-described matches were won due to blunders of the human opponents. They blundered everything: a piece, a checkmate, a draw, an opening. The cheater can't win without that.

    So, the humans are cheaters then, because they capitalized on computer blunders?

  • CHess is just simple game on small 8x8 board with very simple rules, without random events at all. Sure, you can say how fantastic game it is, how long history it has, etc, etc. But truth is there are many other more complex games, with bigger game tree, and if you add random events (like in backgammon)...
    It's funny that people think playing such simple game is proof that computer can think. And yes, I am pro-AI person.
    • I'm sorry, but I fail to see what you would call AI, then. Where do you distinguish between AI and not AI? At what point does a computer, processing information at an extraordinarily high rate, "become" intelligent?

      Consider Searle's Chinese Room problem. You feed someone (written) Chinese under the door, and they have an extremely complete book of rules for "translating" one set of Chinese characters into another. The person then feeds a written "reply" in Chinese back under the door. Do the people i

  • A chess playing computer proves nothing -- chess is the perfect game for a computer: Small board, each piece has very limited and strictly defined movements. At any given moment, the computer can quickly compute every possible move and counter-move.

    And in fact, that's what human chess players do. Look at the world's greatest chess players -- the "Grand Masters". When they play against each other, most of their matches end in a draw. That's because there are no trick plays or suprise moves in chess, an
  • Story: My grandfather was an excellent checkers player, could beat everyone in the county. One day a championship checker player came to town and played my grandfather.

    They started playing, after my grandfather made one wrong move, the man said "you're beat", and he was. He played 'by numbers' according to my grandfather. My grandfather said he had no chance.

    Now who is the better checkers player. Obviously not my grandfather it was the other man.

    But if you changed the rules slighty where the man could no
  • if it would be correct to say that artificial intelligence is superior to human mind.

    Can't we all just get along? ;-)

  • The flaw of being perfect (Score:4, Insightful)

    by csritchie ( 631120 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @09:34AM (#5890823) Homepage
    Chess programs have always been limited by the fact they try to find the most logical move; that leads to the most logical sequence for the current board position.

    They are hardly cheaters.

    True they capitalize on mistakes, but if you play Fritz, or Chessmaster on the most diffuclt setting, even a relative novice can make it to move 20. The computer will try to read your opening and play "book" against it.

    Whereas if you were to play Kasparov as a relative
    novice, I would wager the game would be over, or at the very least you would be in a position that could not be won, by move 15 or so.

    If a human sees you make a move that isn't the best possible move, they can switch their whole strategy to be more aggressive. Computers play the board not the person.

    So far programs treat Kasparov and a relative novice the same. Knowing no difference aside from how the game develops.

    A perfect thing can only make the perfect choice.
    Luckily we aren't limited by such trivialites ;)

    • I believe that there is a parameter called the 'contempt factor' that takes this into account.

      It is used to increase the computer's score and decrease the opponent's to make the computer take aggressive chances with a novice that it wouldn't with a pro.

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