5 ms·

Is it just me or is battle-of-the-AI chess more exciting than humans?

by tus89 5y ago

abnry 5y ago
At the highest level, chess becomes an endurance sport. Magnus is so great because he can squeeze water from a stone. That is definitely admirable, but somewhat deflating compared to idea of the one brilliant move or insane positional play. Give a man bionic legs and it is no longer about how fast he can run but rather what new places he can go.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- poutrathor 5y ago
  or... how far ? how long the batteries stay on ?
vecter 5y ago
I agree, only because the ideas and brilliance/depth that they demonstrate is so breathtaking to behold. I love the chess.com Game of the Day playlist on YouTube, which occasionally has amazing computer chess games with early sacrifices for long-term positional compensation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-vNq61KfLs&list=PL-qLOQ-OEls5EvEHSirKYqmCH_m7IAVWa&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-vNq61KfLs&list=PL-qLOQ-OEl....
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
People usually feel more attached to sports and other competitions if there are personalities behind the results.
SamBam 5y ago
Minor thought, but one of the things I love about high level AI chess, like Stockfish vs AlphaZero, is seeing how their ratings of positions change over the course of the game. I had realized a while ago that, as a human, the computer will give your position a score, and then you make a move, and your score can pretty much only stay the same (if you make a "perfect" move) or go down. Much of the time, it goes down. Two humans playing each other, it's just a question: who's score goes down less each time they make a move? It became a little sad. It seemed like either you can make the right move, or you make a sub-optimal move, and the winner is simply the one who makes the fewer sub-optimal moves. But when AlphaZero plays, and you watch Stockfish's score, the reason it wins is that it makes moves Stockfish thinks is poor, so it rates AlphaZero's moves poorly, and then all of a sudden it has an oh shit! moment when it realises that AlphaZero is actually ahead, and its score jumps. It's really a look inside the computer's head while it's being beaten by a better player.
- stouset 5y ago
  > But when AlphaZero plays, and you watch Stockfish's score, the reason it wins is that it makes moves Stockfish thinks is poor, so it rates AlphaZero's moves poorly, and then all of a sudden it has an oh shit! moment when it realises that AlphaZero is actually ahead, and its score jumps. It's really a look inside the computer's head while it's being beaten by a better player. That's more or less a description of what happens when two humans are playing over the board.
  - amenghra 5y ago
    Right. Think about all the times you would answer “no” to “would you like to switch sides with your opponent right now?”, even as you are about to lose a few moves later.
- keerthiko 5y ago
  > Two humans playing each other, it's just a question: who's score goes down less each time they make a move? It became a little sad. It seemed like either you can make the right move, or you make a sub-optimal move, and the winner is simply the one who makes the fewer sub-optimal moves. What you describe is when a perfect chess-playing computer (approx AlphaZero) observes two humans playing. What humans observe watching two humans playing (including the participating humans) is very similar to what you described AlphaZero vs Stockfish as. The only difference is we don't ask human players to ascribe a score to their opponent's move (and wouldn't expect it to be accurate)
  - tetha 5y ago
    This depends on the level of the player observing the game, compared to the players level. It's pretty common to have a strong player at a masters level pointing out subtle positional or tactical mistakes, but the enemy is not skilled enough to exploit those - so the mistakes do not matter at that level. This is also something to keep in mind to not get discouraged: Just because every move is terrible to a 3500+ chess engine at some level, it does not mean these concerns always apply to you at half that rating.
- 5y ago
muzani 5y ago
I like the AI-Augmented humans. Kasparov has said that the AI advances are exciting for training. I heard Magnus Carlsen would observe the AI more than humans and infer how to play the game from them, rather than use more traditional methods. The Play Magnus Group invests a lot in AI-backed training tools.
codeulike 5y ago
Its kind of more interesting because you can find out more about whats happening 'under the hood'. When two people play its just 'clever brain vs clever brain' with no engineering details. When two AIs play you can say its this many racks of servers and teraflops and the other one has a model thats trained itself from scratch for a few hours or whatever and so when one of them starts to trample the AI opposition we actually learn something other than 'this person has a brain thats good at chess'. e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42251535 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42251535

Is it just me or is battle-of-the-AI chess more exciting than humans?

by tus89 5y ago

Is it just me or is battle-of-the-AI chess more exciting than humans?

At the highest level, chess becomes an endurance sport. Magnus is so great because he can squeeze water from a stone. That is definitely admirable, but somewhat deflating compared to idea of the one brilliant move or insane positional play. Give a man bionic legs and it is no longer about how fast he can run but rather what new places he can go.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
poutrathor 5y ago
or... how far ? how long the batteries stay on ?

vecter 5y ago

I agree, only because the ideas and brilliance/depth that they demonstrate is so breathtaking to behold. I love the chess.com Game of the Day playlist on YouTube, which occasionally has amazing computer chess games with early sacrifices for long-term positional compensation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-vNq61KfLs&list=PL-qLOQ-OEls5EvEHSirKYqmCH_m7IAVWa&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-vNq61KfLs&list=PL-qLOQ-OEl....

LudwigNagasena 5y ago

People usually feel more attached to sports and other competitions if there are personalities behind the results.

SamBam 5y ago

Minor thought, but one of the things I love about high level AI chess, like Stockfish vs AlphaZero, is seeing how their ratings of positions change over the course of the game. I had realized a while ago that, as a human, the computer will give your position a score, and then you make a move, and your score can pretty much only stay the same (if you make a "perfect" move) or go down. Much of the time, it goes down. Two humans playing each other, it's just a question: who's score goes down less each time they make a move? It became a little sad. It seemed like either you can make the right move, or you make a sub-optimal move, and the winner is simply the one who makes the fewer sub-optimal moves. But when AlphaZero plays, and you watch Stockfish's score, the reason it wins is that it makes moves Stockfish thinks is poor, so it rates AlphaZero's moves poorly, and then all of a sudden it has an oh shit! moment when it realises that AlphaZero is actually ahead, and its score jumps. It's really a look inside the computer's head while it's being beaten by a better player.

stouset 5y ago
> But when AlphaZero plays, and you watch Stockfish's score, the reason it wins is that it makes moves Stockfish thinks is poor, so it rates AlphaZero's moves poorly, and then all of a sudden it has an oh shit! moment when it realises that AlphaZero is actually ahead, and its score jumps. It's really a look inside the computer's head while it's being beaten by a better player. That's more or less a description of what happens when two humans are playing over the board.
- amenghra 5y ago
  Right. Think about all the times you would answer “no” to “would you like to switch sides with your opponent right now?”, even as you are about to lose a few moves later.
keerthiko 5y ago
> Two humans playing each other, it's just a question: who's score goes down less each time they make a move? It became a little sad. It seemed like either you can make the right move, or you make a sub-optimal move, and the winner is simply the one who makes the fewer sub-optimal moves. What you describe is when a perfect chess-playing computer (approx AlphaZero) observes two humans playing. What humans observe watching two humans playing (including the participating humans) is very similar to what you described AlphaZero vs Stockfish as. The only difference is we don't ask human players to ascribe a score to their opponent's move (and wouldn't expect it to be accurate)
- tetha 5y ago
  This depends on the level of the player observing the game, compared to the players level. It's pretty common to have a strong player at a masters level pointing out subtle positional or tactical mistakes, but the enemy is not skilled enough to exploit those - so the mistakes do not matter at that level. This is also something to keep in mind to not get discouraged: Just because every move is terrible to a 3500+ chess engine at some level, it does not mean these concerns always apply to you at half that rating.
5y ago

muzani 5y ago

I like the AI-Augmented humans. Kasparov has said that the AI advances are exciting for training. I heard Magnus Carlsen would observe the AI more than humans and infer how to play the game from them, rather than use more traditional methods. The Play Magnus Group invests a lot in AI-backed training tools.

codeulike 5y ago

Its kind of more interesting because you can find out more about whats happening 'under the hood'. When two people play its just 'clever brain vs clever brain' with no engineering details. When two AIs play you can say its this many racks of servers and teraflops and the other one has a model thats trained itself from scratch for a few hours or whatever and so when one of them starts to trample the AI opposition we actually learn something other than 'this person has a brain thats good at chess'. e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42251535 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42251535