We’ve met our match
There’s less distinction with artificial intelligence
By WILLIAM SALETAN
Posted Sunday, May 20, 2007
PERSPECTIVE
Ten years ago, a computer beat the world chess champion in a six-game match. Since then, human champs have played three more matches against machines, scoring two draws and a loss. Grandmasters are being crushed. The era of human dominance is over.
Chess was supposed to be a bastion of human ingenuity, an art machines would never conquer. Now they’re conquering it. The smarter they get, the more threatened we feel.
Don’t be afraid. We, too, are getting smarter, and computers are a big reason why. They’re not our enemies. They’re our offspring — our creations, helpers and challengers.
We certainly needed the challenge. Chess computers, in particular, have exposed our complacency. Grandmasters used to dismiss computers as calculators, unfit for elite competition. Our vanity was so blinding that in 1997, when world champion Garry Kasparov lost to a machine called Deep Blue, he implied that the computer had received human coaching during the match.
Computers kept winning, and we kept whining. In postgame press conferences, players swore that they’d been winning right up until the moment when, for unclear reasons, they lost. Five months ago, the current champion, Vladimir Kramnik, overlooked an instant checkmate by his artificial opponent, Deep Fritz. “I rechecked this variation many times and analyzed quite far ahead,” Kramnik protested. “It seemed to me I was winning.”
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Human has no chance anymore. It’s over.
There is a quote I remember readin once. I can’t remember exactly how it went or who said it, but it was something like this…
Computers have brought no more an end to competitive chess than forklifts have to competitive weightlifting.
I am not completely convinced that Kramnik’s loss to Fritz is the end of the line. Falling into a one mover is extremely uncommon for a World Champion. After that Kramnik had no choice in such a short match but to play riskily for the win and as expected it backfired.
human can make excuse when they lost, but never did computer..
Chess is not a “bastion of human ingenuity”, even though skill over the chess board demonstrates one sort of human intelligence.
Man-machine contests, including Tinsley-CHINOOK, will always be unsatisfactory precisely because the human is human, and fallible. Tinsley’s health was failing when he lost to CHINOOK. Also, a human blunder says little about intelligence.
The article is right in that the authors of chess engines do not get enough credit of their vision, persistence and skill: theirs is a different and more useful form of intelligence.
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The fact that it took so much compute power, and so long a period of time, for a machine to finally equal (surpass) the best human chessplayers, is a testament to the remarkable powers of the human brain.
Positional chess theory, as evolved by brilliant thinkers and practitioners through the centuries, enables us to play at a high standard a game that is fundamentally an exercise in calculation. And human skills continue to grow! Just not as fast as computer database & calculating power.
I am jealous! What I would have given to have Rybka, Chess Assitant when I was a kid! Imagine, having a chess playing partner and study aid stronger than the World Champion. How much stronger I would have gotten.