
Computers Beating Humans at Advanced Chess - ColinWright
http://www.businessinsider.com/computers-beating-humans-at-advanced-chess-2013-11
======
Almaviva
> 'what are humans still good for?'

To take this from chess is rather silly.

Chess is a discrete game on 64 squares with a handful of possibilities in a
given position, and a result of three different outcomes. It's right next to
long division in the spectrum of problems that are amenable to computer
analysis.

If anything, the surprise isn't that humans have been surpassed by computers
in calculating chess positions, it's that humans are as good as we are at such
a discrete and mechanical game of perfect information and logic.

Further the techniques to improve computer chess programs are brilliant, but
they aren't techniques that lend themselves to domains of intelligence beyond
chess.

~~~
jacquesm
> Further the techniques to improve computer chess programs are brilliant, but
> they aren't techniques that lend themselves to domains of intelligence
> beyond chess.

I beg to differ. MiniMax for instance is a technique that has wide application
outside of chess, as do alpha/beta pruning and other optimization strategies.

Chess as a game has advanced computer science considerably. Did you know that
the first computer program was a chess program? It was played by having rooms
full of people work through the code in order to compute the next move.

------
insertion
The article ends like this: "As Cowen puts it, 'what are humans still good
for?'"

For the most part, programmers program better than programs. It's amazing to
think about the possibilities as this statement becomes less true.

~~~
aswanson
Programmers are not better than programs if the program it is competing
against is a black-scholes estmator, compiler, interpreter, or assembler, and
time is an input to the cost function.

~~~
hmate9
Compiler, interpreter or an assembler is basically a translator. It doesn't
have to think, it is simple computation following a set of rules, of course a
computer would win in that case.

But can a computer write code from scratch as good as a human? No(t yet).

~~~
aswanson
Human minds are nothing more than computers running on unoptimized substrates.
It's only a short matter of time on an evolutionary scale before machines
surpass.

~~~
Certhas
unoptimized? Hardly. Evolution has optimized our nerve systems for the task of
heuristic information processing over tens or hundreds of million of
iterations in parallel over billions of different implementations.

That part of your sentence is wrong, the rest (minds are nothing more than
computers running on substrate) is wrong or meaningless, too. It just so
happens that computation of the Turing model is one of the things human minds
do, and badly. It's very much not the only thing. (Unless you mean computer in
a sufficiently vague and abstract way as for the statement to be vacuous.)

~~~
aswanson
_unoptimized? Hardly. Evolution has optimized our nerve systems for the task
of heuristic information processing over tens or hundreds of million of
iterations in parallel over billions of different implementations._

The biological method of information processing, calcium ion transfer, is
demonstrably orders of magnitude slower than artificially devised methods by
semiconductors. So this is physically not optimal and easily proved. So that
part of my sentence is correct.

The rest of your comment is too ill-defined to refute, unless you hold that
there is some non-material, extra-physical quantity of mental process that
cannot be duplicated by engineering.

~~~
jacquesm
Having slower individual components running at ridiculously low power _is_ a
valid optimization because it allows very close packing of those components
and levels of interconnection that we can only dream of in our designed
systems.

The optimization is a subtle one but extremely powerful, and it will be a
while before we can pack equivalent computational power in something of
similar size and power requirements.

Think about the amount of hardware required to simulate a cat brain at reduced
speed, then think about the amount of hardware in a cat brain.

------
jacquesm
Computers may win at chess but they don't _enjoy_ chess. It may very well be
possible to automate most or all of the games that people play and having
computer win the games. But people don't just play to win, they play for fun.

~~~
Drakim
I don't really see how that's relevant. We make computer AIs to play games
because humans enjoy playing against smart opponents, and not all games lend
themselves to a player vs player setup.

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mitchi
Remember that the computer chess AI is actually a snapshot of the intelligence
of a human being. I don't see this distinction made enough. If you are
struggling against a game, you are struggling against the one who made it.

~~~
deutronium
I'm not sure how true that is, the algorithm for the chess engine could be
relatively simple but easily outweigh the abilities of the creator.

Or the engine could make use of techniques such as genetic algorithms to
improve itself. Meaning its abilities wouldn't necessarily relate to its
creator.

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pk2200
This title should be changed to "Computers AREN'T beating humans at advanced
chess". Here's the key excerpt from the blog post that the Business Insider
article links to:

"Computer chess expert Kenneth W. Regan has compiled extensive data on this
question, and you will see that a striking percentage of the best or most
accurate chess games of all time have been played by man-machine pairs."

[http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/FreestyleSt...](http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/FreestyleStudy.html)

~~~
gwern
> This title should be changed to "Computers AREN'T beating humans at advanced
> chess"

How would anyone know? The OP is just linking to the same 2012 thread filled
with speculation which you see pop up every so often. There's nothing hard in
it establishing that centaurs are still useful/no longer useful, and in any
case, 3 years is a long time.

>
> [http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/FreestyleSt...](http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/FreestyleSt..).

Which will be a lagging indicator (if computer chess AIs had just squeaked
over the threshold where a grandmaster's contribution declined to the level of
noise, how many years would it take for unaided chess programs to accumulate
'a striking percentage') and in any case, has just a few games post-2010 and
none at all post-2013.

------
fierycatnet
It's fascinating how far computers have come. I remember Kasparov being pissed
off at Deep Blue because it wasn't a "computer move."

I do think there is a down side for games being solved with computers. Mostly
because games become highly calculated and right moves become computer moves.

Take a look at Paul Morphy's games. They are elegant and exciting to watch and
analyze. I just don't see the same play happening today with human or computer
players. Murphy would lose today but his games were beautiful, maybe even
"incorrect" by today's standards.

~~~
ZenSwordArts
While it is true that Morphy's games were beautiful, one should note that his
opponents usually were significantly weaker players than him. You could also
read this as: Morphy was levels ahead of the other players at the time. He
could get away with 'risky' plays.

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takasc2
Despite growth of Monte Carlo Based programs - Computers play Go(Baduk) only
at roughly the level of a very good amateur player. I am very much looking
forward to the advances in Go that will come in the next 25 years when
computers start to challenge professional players in my preferred game. Until
then, there is another useless pure information skill that humans are better
than computers at.

------
bsaul
a bit off topic but i'm a bit surprised by all the comments on this thread
dismissing human feelings and emotions as something reductible to their
biochemicals components.

Games and many other human activities are _social_ activities.Only analysing
them the way you would analyse a stone falling on the ground is just silly.
you're missing a big chunk of the reasons the phenomenon is taking place in
the first place.

~~~
wfo
The fact that this position is not even discussed but taken as an obviously
true first premise by so many people in tech/engineering is rather troubling;
I think it is the root cause of many very dysfunctional worldviews/failures to
comprehend essential parts of life: over-application of economic thinking in
all areas of discourse, libertarianism, stress upon efficiency at all costs in
all cases, dismissal of the humanities, art, etc.

It is all driven from a simpler and more fundamental notion, that sometimes
people who work on computers all day can begin to believe humans and computers
are identical; a human that doesn't consistently optimize its actions with
respect to certain metrics is just buggy/poorly executed software, hence, the
poor deserve to be poor, action without potential utility gain/profit is
wasted and valueless, etc.

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efferifick
> 'what are humans still good for?'

 __Enjoying __playing chess.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Humans are still good at releasing chemicals that reward neural circuit and
strengthen connections at a certain task. Process whose purpose is to slowly
get better at that task. Wow, we really have an edge over a machine that is
already better at the task and possibly getting better with every game without
that particular reward mechanism you know as "enjoyment".

~~~
efferifick
Ha! Thanks for the chuckle. Yeah, I agree with you on the the fact that
"enjoyment" can be seen as a tool evolved for improving our fitness function's
scores.

The only problem I see with this line of thought is that if we keep following
it, we get into the absurd. "Why even play chess?", "Why even bother doing
anything a computer is better at doing?", "What to do then?". And, this is my
personal answer: do things because you enjoy them.

I don't know if we will ever reach a point where a computer can decide if it
wants to play chess, but I hope that if we do, then the computer chooses to
play on the basis that it wants to play and not on the fact that it has to
optimize some external parameter. (Although as I write this, I realize that
"do things because you enjoy them" practically means maximizing your utility
function.)

Ok, you win. Haha. I just stopped enjoying analyzing this issue. :)

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hasenj
I'm still waiting for the day when a computer defeats a 9-dan professional Go
player in an even game with the same time limits used in a normal professional
games.

~~~
cLeEOGPw
It's a matter of time.

~~~
jacquesm
Without specifying the amount of time that is not a contribution, it could be
a few years or it could be untold millennia.

------
edward
I guessed this was Tyler Cowen from the headline. He goes on and on about
chess in his book, Average is Over.

