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Some in the chess community seems to be still in denial phase. The Go/Baduk community has experienced the similar thing early last year. - Jan 2016 (AlphaGo b

Some in the chess community seems to be still in denial phase. The Go/Baduk community has experienced the similar thing early last year. - Jan 2016 (AlphaGo beat Fan Hui): Fan Hui was only a 2p and European champion, he's no way near the top - Mar 2016 (AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol): AlphaGo still lost 1 game. The #1 rank player can probably still beat it - Jan 2017 (AlphaGo Master beats 60 pros): Ok, AlphaGo is strong, but those are only online games with short time control. - May 2017 (AlphaGo Master beats #1 ranking, Ke Jie): ... - Oct 2017 (AlphaGo Zero beats AlphaGo Master): Ok, nothing we have right now can probably beat it.

roenxi 9y ago
Your point is correct, but the thing to note is that until AlphaGo I don't think we've seen an AI improve quite that fast. The AlphaGo Fan had an elo ~3,150 and it was correct that Lee Sedol (elo ~3,500) would win against it. Google showed up to play Lee Sedol with a ~3,750 elo network. 600 elo in 6 months is basically unprecedented growth in Go AI strength, and took AlphaGo from "it can play a good professional game" to "gee, maybe the No. 1 human can take a game off it". I'm getting the number from the AlphaGo wiki page.
- conistonwater 9y ago
  Think low-hanging fruit, I'd say: 600 Elo could be reasonable for a very new idea with lots of improvements still left to try. AlphaGo's improvement definitely petered out later, the difference between Master and Zero is nowhere near that big. On that basis, the skepticism still seems a bit wrong to me.
RivieraKid 9y ago
Denial of what? That one chess engine dethroned the currently best one? This happens every second year. And doesn't make sense why the chess community would be in denial, did you mean chess engine community?
- jsemrau 9y ago
  You are absolutely right. We have build machines to augment human capabilities for thousands of years. I don't see an optimized chess engine on the same level of innovation as a racing tire. A great engineering feat and accomplishment, but not entirely groundbreaking.
- joefkelley 9y ago
  The difference is this is an entirely new paradigm of chess engine. So it's not just Stockfish getting an edge over Houdini that year or whatever. There is plenty of "they didn't give stockfish enough memory, the hardware isn't comparable, the time controls were too short, etc etc" in the chess community so there is certainly some denial. But nobody thinks any human would stand a chance. But I agree it's nowhere near the Go denial since the chess community gave up on humans remaining competitive with computers long ago.
  - RivieraKid 9y ago
    I see this as scepticism, not denial. Denial implies that you don't want something to be true, which is perhaps the case with engine developers, not the general chess community.
    - forgot-my-pw 9y ago
      I think you're right. Scepticism is more correct.

roenxi 9y ago

Your point is correct, but the thing to note is that until AlphaGo I don't think we've seen an AI improve quite that fast. The AlphaGo Fan had an elo ~3,150 and it was correct that Lee Sedol (elo ~3,500) would win against it. Google showed up to play Lee Sedol with a ~3,750 elo network. 600 elo in 6 months is basically unprecedented growth in Go AI strength, and took AlphaGo from "it can play a good professional game" to "gee, maybe the No. 1 human can take a game off it". I'm getting the number from the AlphaGo wiki page.

conistonwater 9y ago
Think low-hanging fruit, I'd say: 600 Elo could be reasonable for a very new idea with lots of improvements still left to try. AlphaGo's improvement definitely petered out later, the difference between Master and Zero is nowhere near that big. On that basis, the skepticism still seems a bit wrong to me.

RivieraKid 9y ago

Denial of what? That one chess engine dethroned the currently best one? This happens every second year. And doesn't make sense why the chess community would be in denial, did you mean chess engine community?

jsemrau 9y ago
You are absolutely right. We have build machines to augment human capabilities for thousands of years. I don't see an optimized chess engine on the same level of innovation as a racing tire. A great engineering feat and accomplishment, but not entirely groundbreaking.
joefkelley 9y ago
The difference is this is an entirely new paradigm of chess engine. So it's not just Stockfish getting an edge over Houdini that year or whatever. There is plenty of "they didn't give stockfish enough memory, the hardware isn't comparable, the time controls were too short, etc etc" in the chess community so there is certainly some denial. But nobody thinks any human would stand a chance. But I agree it's nowhere near the Go denial since the chess community gave up on humans remaining competitive with computers long ago.
- RivieraKid 9y ago
  I see this as scepticism, not denial. Denial implies that you don't want something to be true, which is perhaps the case with engine developers, not the general chess community.
  - forgot-my-pw 9y ago
    I think you're right. Scepticism is more correct.