

The Chess Master and the Computer - nl
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/

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detokaal
Active tournament player here, FIDE 2100. They key point to remember here is
that computers are able to avoid the tactical pitfalls that humans cannot. In
other words, they can see all the possible outcomes within a given number of
moves. The fewer the pieces, the farther ahead they calculate and play
perfectly. Indeed there are databases of up to 7 pieces that are used for
perfect play.

Humans cannot see as far as a computer, but they don't need to do so.
Grandmasters recognize over 10,000 common positions (after the opening phase)
and their strategies based on experience and study. This allows them "know"
the probable outcome of a given move far beyond that of a computer. The
problem arises when the complexity of a position grows to a point that tactics
> position. Human players avoid these positions when playing computers. Strong
human players aim for these positions when playing a weaker opponent. And
computers can be programmed for "anti-human" strategies that create these
complications.

Kasparov was aware of all these variables, but underestimated the tactical
ability of the machine. And, ultimately failed, because he fell for a well-
known trap in the opening during the last game. The computer was programmed
with a database that included the trap. Kasparov was too - with his memory -
but unlike silicon, simply forgot for a moment and made the fatal move that
sealed the match.

What does the mean for business? A superior long-term strategy that
anticipates short-term problems trumps a short-term strategy that knows all
the immediate outcomes but neglects to consider the end game.

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Dn_Ab
I liked this article. Especially the end bit on poker since teaching my laptop
to play poker (NL Holdem) is a bit of hobby of mine. Its learning very well
and is already much better than me (I am only above average from a random
sample of humans, so relatively weak).

My goal is to have it at least not lose badly vs my professional high stakes
friend heads up. It does quite well against weaker players... Its not a rule
based player, and my favourite bit is I can actually see it get better per
game. It makes mistakes and learns from them. Poker is a very good place to
try machine learning algos and also make practical use of game theory since it
can't be effectively brute forced. Ive been iteratively bootstrapping newer
more complex AI components on top of the previous bases. wrote it in F#.

~~~
lwat
There are so many people doing this that I can't play Holdem online anymore!
I'm not good enough to beat the decent bots today, they have improved
massively over the last 5 years.

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bambax
This is a great article. I especially liked the idea that

> _humans today are starting to play more like computers_

ie, the advent of computers that are prejudice-free pushed human players into
a whole different way of playing; from just the previous sentence:

> _a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t
> been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it
> doesn't._

What I don't like as much is the constant complaint that we're not trying hard
enough to make computers think like humans, that Deep Blue and all its ilk
dumbly calculate millions of moves without really "thinking".

This reminds me of the efforts that are made to have robots look like humans
(walk like us for example).

What's the point? A Roomba doesn't have legs and yet it's better than me at
vacuum cleaning (meaning, we both suck, but I suck more).

We wouldn't want pliers to be shaped like a hand; computers are pliers for the
brain: they extend it, but they don't need to be shaped like it.

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bumbledraven
_The dreams of creating an artificial intelligence that would engage in an
ancient game symbolic of human thought have been abandoned. Instead, every
year we have new chess programs, and new versions of old ones, that are all
based on the same basic programming concepts for picking a move by searching
through millions of possibilities that were developed in the 1960s and
1970s.... Like so much else in our technology-rich and innovation-poor modern
world, chess computing has fallen prey to incrementalism and the demands of
the market._

Here Kasparov misses the mark. Should airplanes flap their wings like birds?
Should bicycles have feet? What matters in engineering is the quality of the
result, not how the result is achieved.

What's more, the demands of market that Kasparov disparages actually help
drive innovation, for if someone were to invent a novel chess program that
wipes the floor with all the other programs on the market, is there any doubt
it would outsell them?

~~~
solipsist
I liked your analogies, but it's difficult to compare the flapping of birds'
wings and the movement of our feet to the extreme complexities of the human
brain. In the first two cases, humans have invented more effective ways of
doing a task than the biological methods. These examples are elementary
compared to the human brain, and they are most likely not to be the _most_
effective ways of doing the tasks - they are only _more_ effective then the
current methods. Perhaps if we dissected the processes to a more rudimentary
level, we could revise the systems and make them even more effective. However,
with simple processes like these it is probably not economically worth it as
Kasparov said.

As a result, when you apply these analogies to the human intuition and more
complex processes, you are confronted with a dilemma. Our society is reaching
a limit where our brute-force methods of recreating systems are no longer
working. We are looking too much at the face value of these systems, and thus
reaching problems with efficiency and further innovation. In my humble
opinion, Kasparov is trying to say that the demands of the market have caused
this behavior which benefits in short term, but limits us in the long run.
Taking risks to work on a longer-term project of recreating systems at a more
fundamental level is what keeps innovation going, and it's time we take it to
a new level with respect to human intuition.

~~~
bumbledraven
_In the first two cases, humans have invented more effective ways of doing a
task than the biological methods._

Kasparov acknowledges that computers are superior to unassisted humans at
playing chess, so how is the third case (computer chess) different?

 _[B]rute-force methods of recreating systems are no longer working._

On the contrary, brute-force algorithms are working better and better as a
result of the trend currently known as Moore's law. The faster the hardware,
the less intelligent the software running on it has to be to do the same job.

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ctkrohn
It's encouraging to see that Kasparov framed his famous tournament as
"programmer vs. machine" rather than "man vs. machine." In hindsight, it's
easy to chalk Deep Blue's victory up to computational inevitability, but there
was some seriously cool engineering going on behind the scenes. Deep Blue was
a purpose-built chess machine: a 30-node RS/6000 supercomputer controlling 480
custom chess chips. It was the culmination of nearly a decade of research at
IBM.

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edw519
_Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone
and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior
process._

I had to read this statement 3 times before it hit me: What's true in chess is
also often true in business. A little background...

I recently wrote a forecasting system for a company that processes 7 million
orders per year. Worse, this company was the merger of two other companies,
each of which did forecasting differently. One had a very expensive Oracle
based "strong comptuer" that calculated almost everything and told the
planners exactly what to do. The other just dumped data into Excel files and
teams of "strong humans" manipulated them until they intuitively worked out
the best plan. Neither team could believe the way the other team worked.

The system I wrote using guidance from both teams turned out to be "weak human
+ machine + better process" which leveraged the strengths and minimized the
weaknesses of the two extremes. But I didn't realize that until I read this
article.

Thank you Garry Kasparov. As much as I love chess just for the sake of playing
it, it's nice to understand how it's thinking applies to other stuff as well.

~~~
nl
Yes! I thought that was one of the key insights of the article too.

A similar example that shows the strength of great organisation is a famous
1999 online chess match known as _Kasparov versus the World_. In that game
Irina Krush organized the world team well enough to take Kasparov to 62 moves
and nearly won the game.

To quote him:

 _It is the greatest game in the history of chess. The sheer number of ideas,
the complexity, and the contribution it has made to chess make it the most
important game ever played._

<http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/kasparov-versus-the-world/>

~~~
huherto
Fascinating article. I was wandering what it means to democracy. Can we use
those ideas in collaboration to have a better decision making in real
governments?

~~~
iwwr
Linear programming was hoped to have been a strong enough framework to replace
the market-based resource allocation system. Unfortunately, no single
centrally managed computer could outperform a network of autonomous free
participants. Modern government is the realization that there can be no
prosperity without free agents, and that propaganda can persuade these free
agents to acquiesce to being governed.

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iwwr
The Kasparov v. World match was a democratic process in the modern
understanding in that people were offered equivalent choices (almost equally
strong), selected by the experts, with little public understanding of the
deeper ramifications of the decisions.

In a democracy, people are asked to make decisions in fields that really need
expert knowledge to discern, but fortunately (or some say, 'unfortunately),
these choices are pre-selected by a group of experts. These people are both
voters (where the experts are "public opinion leaders) or legislators (where
the experts are lobby firms).

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deutronium
This letter is interesting, regarding Kasparov having a rematch with Deep Blue
and also on the commercialisation of the Deep Blue chip:

<http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/feng.html>

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EGreg
Yeah, I remember this result. I saw Kasparov before his match with Deep Blue
(my dad knows him). I wish there was a rematch against him and computer. And
it's true, process is very important -- not just in chess but elsewhere. And
so is making use of human creativity!

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maeon3
Computers have completely dominated Chess, lookout grocery store employees,
you are next.

~~~
gwern
You seem to be making a joke, but my local grocery store has already replaced
a few cashiers with machines.

~~~
lwat
I use them every week at my local Woolworths: <http://i.imgur.com/kGwNq.jpg>

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amichail
Why does society glorify such pointless games? They are harmful too. Chess has
probably made millions feel stupid for no reason really.

~~~
jacquesm
That 'pointless game' is not glorified by society but is enjoyed by those that
play it because it is not a pointless game but actually helps you to
understand stuff and develop your skills at strategic and analytical thinking.

Chess has never made anybody feel 'stupid', no more than that any hammer ever
killed someone.

People make other people feel stupid, mostly the people with a little more
skill than you. People do stuff like that all the time, it's petty behaviour
but you can't blame the game of chess for that.

The harmful part here is in part the person that allows the judgment of others
to have such devastating effect on them, it takes two to play the 'your
stupid' game, and if you let your skills at chess and others' opinions of you
weigh that heavily then I would suggest you either lighten up or you get
better at chess ;)

The thing I personally don't like about chess (and which is my main reason for
no longer playing it competitively) is the people that memorize book openings
and use that as a substitute for original play. I don't want to play some
canned opening to the mid game, I want to enjoy a game with the person on the
others side of the board.

My standard solution to that is to make a really bad but totally off the books
opening. This puts me at an instant disadvantage but it certainly makes the
game more interesting ;)

edit: regarding the 'stupid', here is a quote from the article, arguably from
the worlds very best chess player straight to you:

"Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general
intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it
might be."

~~~
amichail
Taking a game seriously that computers are better at is silly. It's better to
focus on things that humans are better at.

~~~
jacquesm
You are missing some or all of the point here. Computers are not 'better' at
chess than humans, they are simply faster and have access to more and more
perfect forms of memory.

Humans learn a few simple rules and combine that with a motivation to win and
suddenly 'know how to play chess' with some ability after a few hours, days or
weeks. To become a master at the game takes a lot more study but in general
people can learn how to play chess with some ease.

You are the one who is taking it seriously! Games are meant to be enjoyed, not
to be taken too serious and even the big 'names' from chess play the game as a
way to pit their wits against others. The way they arrive at their solutions
is totally unrelated to the way computers arrive at theirs.

Imagine if you showed up to a chess contest armed with a veritable library of
chess books, a history of all the grand master games ever played, their
openings and evaluation of the mid games that came out of those openings and a
near infinite number of assistants that are willing to play your current board
position through large number of variations to see the possible outcomes of
potential moves.

I think the key to continued enjoyment in spite of the fact that computers are
'better' at this is that they indeed arrive by a way that between humans would
be considered cheating.

Be impressed by how much resistance our humble brains can put up in the face
of such an onslaught and realize that we are the ones that are 'better' at it
because no computer that ever got 'taught' chess was any good at all. It takes
the combined elements of vast pre-programmed storage and brute force to make
it to the higher classes in chess and that has nothing to do with 'playing
chess'.

~~~
amichail
I have more respect and interest in creative activities that are far beyond
what computers can do.

~~~
jacquesm
Writing a chess program is a creative activity :)

What computers 'can do' is limited by our imagination and our ability to
express ourselves. As Kasparov points out in the article as soon as IBM had
the publicity they wanted (to win from the best human chess player at any
cost) they scrapped the project.

But the contest was meaningless the way it was posed anyway. Personally I
think that the best way to deal with the situation would have been to
'handicap' the computer to use the same amount of resources that the human has
access to, so a given power budget and no access to pre-programmed libraries.
That would make the contest much more interesting, and more importantly would
drive forward our thinking about solving this sort of problem in an
intelligent way instead of using the sledge-hammer of brute force.

