
Chess, a Drosophila of reasoning - prostoalex
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1087.full
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ideonexus
I followed the recent championship matches on chess24.com and was blown away
at how compelling and engaging computers have made the game. There was a
chessboard on the screen with the current board state and a computer analysis
on the side estimating which player had the advantage and by how much. While
waiting for players to move, I was able to test out my own ideas on the board
of which moves I thought were best and see what the computer thought of them
(every move I made pretty much threw the game to the opponent).

After losing to Deep Blue, Kasparov came up with the concept of "Advanced
Chess," where players team up with a chess program of their choice to augment
their play. At the time, a chess program with a computer coach was still
superior to a chess program alone. That didn't last long, but I think Kasparov
was on to something and I would love to see students paired up with open-
source chess programs for tournaments that blend chess-playing proficiency
with computer-programming.

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mindgam3
Completely agree that Kasparov was on to something with Advanced Chess. The
first iteration of the idea failed to gain traction but that was more due to
cumbersome tech (players staring at desktops playing slow games, not much of a
spectator sport) than to the idea itself. I’m prototyping some ideas in this
space with a team of hackers/chess enthusiasts. Ping me if interested in
contributing or beta testing, contact info in my profile.

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jobigoud
I think it has been shown since then that for modern computer chess engine the
human member of the centaur team is always detrimental. It's strictly superior
to systematically ignore the human suggestions.

~~~
mindgam3
Interesting, I'm not aware of this but conclusively shown, but please provide
a link to back that up as I'm certainly curious.

That said, if you do centaur blitz or bullet chess using over the board
pieces, not computer move input, I'm fairly certain that the skill of the
human player will be a factor :-)

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porges
Here's a much better article with a similar title:
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c9e7/3fc7ec81458057e6f96de1...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c9e7/3fc7ec81458057e6f96de1cba095e84a05c4.pdf)

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WilliamEdward
It's always nice to see Kasparov, who could have easily been salty for losing
to a machine and given up on chess forever, instead keep in touch with
technology and science to make the game better.

He's at the age where you could have expected him to be willfully ignorant on
these sorts of things, but he chose not to be. I will respect him for that.

~~~
zwischenzug
Kasparov was the first player to significantly profit from computer chess,
selling many many chess computers I fantasised about owning as a child. He has
always profited by playing and talking abut computers, often in ways that
baffled those in the field:

[http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,9843...](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,984305-1,00.html)

(the 'insightful' pawn sac was suggested by most run of the mill computers,
and seemed an obvious moves to strong humans at the time).

~~~
WilliamEdward
Sure, that was like 20+ years ago. I'm saying today, he has no reason to keep
writing about chess and yet here we are.

~~~
bluGill
He is a well known figure in chess. More people recognize his name in
connection to chess than Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana combined! Of
course he writes about chess - when he does people listen and assume he has
something insightful to say (weather or not he does), thus when he wants money
he needs to talk about chess. He can be (and reportedly is) a great
inspirational speaker, but he is expected to talk about chess at some time in
each speech.

~~~
arisAlexis
do you really think Kasparov writes about chess when he runs out of money?

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cee_el123
I'm a beginner violinist who for a long time looked warily at the fact that
robot violinists who'll play better than us aren't more than a few decades
away.

But I realize nowadays that technology isn't just about automating away what
we do as humans - its can also be about removing anything that might be
standing between you and your fullest potential.

e.g.

\- even if I couldn't find a professional orchestra willing to play with me as
soloist, someday a robot orchestra could do that for me.

\- a teacher that can spend unlimited amounts of time observing me and guiding
me in my learning in the most personalised way

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ttonkytonk
I wonder if artificial learning could recreate the intellect of Socrates.

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a_imho
Are we peak ML yet? I understand the need for hype, but I'm yet to see a
killer app.

~~~
tonysdg
Not even close. Chess is a relatively easy target for AI: the rules are well-
defined, all of the pieces are visible to both players, and while the state
space is massive, it's a tractable problem.

Now look at something like DOTA: while each avatar has specific moves, the
combination of when you play them, how you chain them, and where you aim them
is very unclear; half the time, you've got no idea where your opponents are
due to fog of war; and the state space is infinitely larger than chess' (which
is already huge to begin with).

In short, we're just getting started. Chess was always just a stepping stone
for the AI folks -- a chance to show how a machine could reason. Buckle up --
it's gonna be a wild ride :-)

