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.
> 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.)
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.
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.
People have been making this claim since computers have existed, and it hasn't happened yet. It's similar to the way that fusion power is always 20 years away.
I think it will happen eventually, but given the long record of failed predictions in this area, I think that a blanket statement that it's going to be a "short matter of time" is unwarranted.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Suppose you have a child who has been raised isolated from the world and only taught by a single person - is it fair to say the child is actually a snapshot of another person's intelligence?
The program has been taught and empowered to make decisions the person can't make. It's no more a snapshot of the person than a child is a snapshot of its parents.
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."
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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. :)
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.
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.