3 ms·

That's a really oversimplified view. The truth is beyond a certain point no amount of "theorizing" is enough to overcome the sheer computational power of progra

That's a really oversimplified view. The truth is beyond a certain point no amount of "theorizing" is enough to overcome the sheer computational power of programs. AlphaZero just took advantage of recent advances in neural networks and GPU hardware to achieve a better tradeoff between hard rules and heuristics than Stockfish. Both of them are probably Pareto efficient in some sense, and barring some insane undiscovered loophole in the rules of chess it's unlikely that any human can come close to beating them.

scarmig 7y ago
Question: if we discovered a way for white to always force a win, would humans be able to use that to beat black AIs consistently?
- aurelianito 7y ago
  This has been already found for checkers, but players around the world still play it. If the way is too complicated then we cannot apply it unaided.
- arcticfox 7y ago
  It feels kind of surprising that this doesn't exist (yet). There are only a handful of reasonable moves per turn, and given the unbelievable amounts of moves that offline chess engines can process given time and server farms, I'm just surprised that doesn't overwhelm the reasonable branches at some point into forcing a win. Maybe someday.
  - sukilot 7y ago
    The size of chess is approximately 10^50 Computers cost about $0.01 / GFlop (10^12 operaions); $1e47 for 10^50 operations. The world economy is $1e14/yr. That's 1e33 years to check every chess position, using all of Earth resources. You'd need to find symmetries to collapse the search spaceby a factor of 10^33
  - v64 7y ago
    For what it's worth, endgame table databases exist that give perfect play for when there are a limited number of pieces left on the board. As of now, we have databases for perfect play when 7 pieces remain on the board (including the two kings). The 8-piece tablebase is computationally possible, but I don't believe a comprehensive release has come out yet. Even the current 7-piece tables are incomplete because situations like lone king vs. six opposing pieces haven't been explicitly calculated due to their obviousness.
- kamkha 7y ago
  Yes; further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess

scarmig 7y ago

Question: if we discovered a way for white to always force a win, would humans be able to use that to beat black AIs consistently?

aurelianito 7y ago
This has been already found for checkers, but players around the world still play it. If the way is too complicated then we cannot apply it unaided.
arcticfox 7y ago
It feels kind of surprising that this doesn't exist (yet). There are only a handful of reasonable moves per turn, and given the unbelievable amounts of moves that offline chess engines can process given time and server farms, I'm just surprised that doesn't overwhelm the reasonable branches at some point into forcing a win. Maybe someday.
- sukilot 7y ago
  The size of chess is approximately 10^50 Computers cost about $0.01 / GFlop (10^12 operaions); $1e47 for 10^50 operations. The world economy is $1e14/yr. That's 1e33 years to check every chess position, using all of Earth resources. You'd need to find symmetries to collapse the search spaceby a factor of 10^33
- v64 7y ago
  For what it's worth, endgame table databases exist that give perfect play for when there are a limited number of pieces left on the board. As of now, we have databases for perfect play when 7 pieces remain on the board (including the two kings). The 8-piece tablebase is computationally possible, but I don't believe a comprehensive release has come out yet. Even the current 7-piece tables are incomplete because situations like lone king vs. six opposing pieces haven't been explicitly calculated due to their obviousness.
kamkha 7y ago
Yes; further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess