6 ms·

There would be no point in keeping the human players around. You may as well just watch the computers play each other (which some people already do, occasionall

There would be no point in keeping the human players around. You may as well just watch the computers play each other (which some people already do, occasionally). We’ve long since passed the point where humans can improve on the moves suggested by computers. The optimal strategy would be to just play the computer’s recommended move every time.

xrd 4y ago
The reason we watch sporting events is to watch a fallible human attempt to control their body or mind enough to best other humans attempting to do the same. No one will watch a competition between two self-driving identical Mazdas racing down the road.
- tuukkah 4y ago
  What kind of team work between a human and a machine would result in interesting chess? I hope it would reduce the need to study openings. Something simple to begin with: let computers play the odd moves and humans the even moves, without any communication. This way, the computer would need to play in a way that would make sense to their team mate.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    This is the format in a lot of tournaments where a pro is paired with an amateur. For example, in pairs snooker or pool, there are two ways to arrange pairs: Alternate innings and alternate strokes. With alternate strokes, the better player will not only execute their shot, they will arrange to leave a shot that their teammate can easily make. --- But all that being said, if such a game becomes popular, cheating will still be a thing as the team will always benefit from having the strongest possible human player.
- jcalabro 4y ago
  There's good reason to watch strong chess computers play each other! They can teach you some interesting techniques at the higher level (or so I've been told, I'm a lowly 1200 :P)
- tialaramex 4y ago
  Well if they're actually identical this seems like a stupid race. But if the software is different, sure, why not? The Robot soccer leagues had a league where the platform is literally identical, all teams buy some Nao robots from Aldebaran Robotics, they have a coloured indicator so you know which team is which - but the matches certainly aren't like watching a mirror, if one team has programmed a vastly improved dribbling strategy or the other team's ball tracking isn't very good, it's pretty obvious who wins that. Humans can no longer usefully assist chess computers. So all a human is doing is attempting to obey simple movement instructions, which isn't even a sport.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- gibspaulding 4y ago
  I think lots of folks would happily watch a race between two different manufacture's self driving cars.
  - jlbbellefeuille 4y ago
    http://selfracingcars.com/ http://selfracingcars.com/
- slg 4y ago
  >No one will watch a competition between two self-driving identical Mazdas racing down the road. That depends entirely on how it is presented. Over 13 million people watched these inanimate marbles[1] compete in a variety of races. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AbcCbyJ2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AbcCbyJ2U
  - aksss 4y ago
    ~13m + 1, dammit!
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    Marble races are fantastic, but not as good as the hotwheels races (3d botmaker diecast racing or something like that, the announcers are pretty funny)
  - jrussino 4y ago
    This is satire, right?
thatguy0900 4y ago
I thought it was interesting thatcomputer vs computer chess is largely just ties. In order to make them more interesting tournaments usually start the computers with some pieces already moved to force them into unusual positions
- gamegoblin 4y ago
  TCEC, probably the most prominent long-form chess engine tournament, does exactly that. It starts them in a pre-played opening position, usually ~10 moves or so into the game. There are still a lot of ties, but fewer than if you let them play from neutral. Each engine plays both sides of the position (white and black) so it's always a bit of a cool upset when an engine wins both the white and black side of the same starting position.
CrazyStat 4y ago
This is not true. There are chess leagues that allow unlimited computer assistance (most notably the ICCF, which organizes the World Correspondence Chess Championship), and you don't get anywhere close to the very top level by just playing the computer's recommended move every time. Computers beat humans, but human+computer is still stronger than a computer alone.
- Tenoke 4y ago
  There's been a handful of tournaments, but in the last one I can find[0] from 2017 an engine alone already beat all teams. Engines have only gotten stronger since then, so you'd have to use particularly bad engines or big limitations for humans to have useful input. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess#Online_tournaments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess#Online_tourname...
  - CrazyStat 4y ago
    I would have thought that, since I mentioned the ICCF as the most notable organization in computer-assisted chess, you would have looked into it before trying to contradict my claims. Evidently you did not. The ICCF organizes matches, maintains rating lists, grants titles including grandmaster, and organizes a world championship for computer-assisted chess games. Check them out [1] and stop making claims about a style of chess that you are obviously not familiar with. [1] https://www.iccf.com/ https://www.iccf.com/
    - Tenoke 4y ago
      If you want to reference an instance of player+computer games or tournaments where players+engines beat the strongest engines link to that rather than ICCF's homepage (who do allow computer assistence). Nothing on their homepage remotely proves your claim, and a quick search doesn't show anywhere they claim so, which is to be expected since you are simply wrong. All that really happens in modern ICCF championships after the opening is babysitting engines and taking their top move(s). The human part is mainly picking and running the engine(s).
pazimzadeh 4y ago
Wouldn't that depend on if there is a time limit? It seems under time constraints, a human grandmaster aided by a computer would do better than the computer alone, since the human can also use heuristics.
- david422 4y ago
  You'd probably just optimize the computer for heuristics then, and would be faster than the human.
- oefrha 4y ago
  AI uses heuristics just fine. You might have missed the decades of post-Deep Blue development. Check out DeepMind.
  - pazimzadeh 4y ago
    Hm, ok what if we introduce time limits and also only allow the computer to use as much energy as the human brain does?
    - cayleyh 4y ago
      The results might surprise you: An new iPhone can run the latest chess engines at a level that should beat all but the absolute best players (https://www.hiarcs.com/iphone-chess.html https://www.hiarcs.com/iphone-chess.html). Apple doesn't publish power stats for their A-series chips that I could find, and I couldn't find a direct comparison of power draw running a chess engine, but Anandtec's numbers running synthetic benchmarks indicate between 3-5 watts when under single thread load: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo.... Estimates for human brain energy consumption are vague, but generally accepted somewhere between 12-25 watts, with 20 being the most used average guess (https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-a-human-brain-consume?share=1 https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-a-human-brain-con..., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-cal..., https://www.munichre.com/topics-online/en/digitalisation/interview-henning-beck.html https://www.munichre.com/topics-online/en/digitalisation/int...) Given these numbers, not infeasible to assume that a computer restricted to the energy usage of the human brain would win every game when not playing Magnus?
cayleyh 4y ago
New chess variant: Cyber. Each player has a budget and can buy a limited number of moves from the engine throughout the game :D

xrd 4y ago

The reason we watch sporting events is to watch a fallible human attempt to control their body or mind enough to best other humans attempting to do the same. No one will watch a competition between two self-driving identical Mazdas racing down the road.

tuukkah 4y ago
What kind of team work between a human and a machine would result in interesting chess? I hope it would reduce the need to study openings. Something simple to begin with: let computers play the odd moves and humans the even moves, without any communication. This way, the computer would need to play in a way that would make sense to their team mate.
- a4isms 4y ago
  This is the format in a lot of tournaments where a pro is paired with an amateur. For example, in pairs snooker or pool, there are two ways to arrange pairs: Alternate innings and alternate strokes. With alternate strokes, the better player will not only execute their shot, they will arrange to leave a shot that their teammate can easily make. --- But all that being said, if such a game becomes popular, cheating will still be a thing as the team will always benefit from having the strongest possible human player.
jcalabro 4y ago
There's good reason to watch strong chess computers play each other! They can teach you some interesting techniques at the higher level (or so I've been told, I'm a lowly 1200 :P)
tialaramex 4y ago
Well if they're actually identical this seems like a stupid race. But if the software is different, sure, why not? The Robot soccer leagues had a league where the platform is literally identical, all teams buy some Nao robots from Aldebaran Robotics, they have a coloured indicator so you know which team is which - but the matches certainly aren't like watching a mirror, if one team has programmed a vastly improved dribbling strategy or the other team's ball tracking isn't very good, it's pretty obvious who wins that. Humans can no longer usefully assist chess computers. So all a human is doing is attempting to obey simple movement instructions, which isn't even a sport.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
gibspaulding 4y ago
I think lots of folks would happily watch a race between two different manufacture's self driving cars.
- jlbbellefeuille 4y ago
  http://selfracingcars.com/ http://selfracingcars.com/
slg 4y ago
>No one will watch a competition between two self-driving identical Mazdas racing down the road. That depends entirely on how it is presented. Over 13 million people watched these inanimate marbles[1] compete in a variety of races. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AbcCbyJ2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AbcCbyJ2U
- aksss 4y ago
  ~13m + 1, dammit!
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Marble races are fantastic, but not as good as the hotwheels races (3d botmaker diecast racing or something like that, the announcers are pretty funny)
- jrussino 4y ago
  This is satire, right?

thatguy0900 4y ago

I thought it was interesting thatcomputer vs computer chess is largely just ties. In order to make them more interesting tournaments usually start the computers with some pieces already moved to force them into unusual positions

gamegoblin 4y ago
TCEC, probably the most prominent long-form chess engine tournament, does exactly that. It starts them in a pre-played opening position, usually ~10 moves or so into the game. There are still a lot of ties, but fewer than if you let them play from neutral. Each engine plays both sides of the position (white and black) so it's always a bit of a cool upset when an engine wins both the white and black side of the same starting position.

CrazyStat 4y ago

This is not true. There are chess leagues that allow unlimited computer assistance (most notably the ICCF, which organizes the World Correspondence Chess Championship), and you don't get anywhere close to the very top level by just playing the computer's recommended move every time. Computers beat humans, but human+computer is still stronger than a computer alone.

Tenoke 4y ago
There's been a handful of tournaments, but in the last one I can find[0] from 2017 an engine alone already beat all teams. Engines have only gotten stronger since then, so you'd have to use particularly bad engines or big limitations for humans to have useful input. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess#Online_tournaments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess#Online_tourname...
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  I would have thought that, since I mentioned the ICCF as the most notable organization in computer-assisted chess, you would have looked into it before trying to contradict my claims. Evidently you did not. The ICCF organizes matches, maintains rating lists, grants titles including grandmaster, and organizes a world championship for computer-assisted chess games. Check them out [1] and stop making claims about a style of chess that you are obviously not familiar with. [1] https://www.iccf.com/ https://www.iccf.com/
  - Tenoke 4y ago
    If you want to reference an instance of player+computer games or tournaments where players+engines beat the strongest engines link to that rather than ICCF's homepage (who do allow computer assistence). Nothing on their homepage remotely proves your claim, and a quick search doesn't show anywhere they claim so, which is to be expected since you are simply wrong. All that really happens in modern ICCF championships after the opening is babysitting engines and taking their top move(s). The human part is mainly picking and running the engine(s).

pazimzadeh 4y ago

Wouldn't that depend on if there is a time limit? It seems under time constraints, a human grandmaster aided by a computer would do better than the computer alone, since the human can also use heuristics.

david422 4y ago
You'd probably just optimize the computer for heuristics then, and would be faster than the human.
oefrha 4y ago
AI uses heuristics just fine. You might have missed the decades of post-Deep Blue development. Check out DeepMind.
- pazimzadeh 4y ago
  Hm, ok what if we introduce time limits and also only allow the computer to use as much energy as the human brain does?
  - cayleyh 4y ago
    The results might surprise you: An new iPhone can run the latest chess engines at a level that should beat all but the absolute best players (https://www.hiarcs.com/iphone-chess.html https://www.hiarcs.com/iphone-chess.html). Apple doesn't publish power stats for their A-series chips that I could find, and I couldn't find a direct comparison of power draw running a chess engine, but Anandtec's numbers running synthetic benchmarks indicate between 3-5 watts when under single thread load: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo.... Estimates for human brain energy consumption are vague, but generally accepted somewhere between 12-25 watts, with 20 being the most used average guess (https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-a-human-brain-consume?share=1 https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-a-human-brain-con..., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-cal..., https://www.munichre.com/topics-online/en/digitalisation/interview-henning-beck.html https://www.munichre.com/topics-online/en/digitalisation/int...) Given these numbers, not infeasible to assume that a computer restricted to the energy usage of the human brain would win every game when not playing Magnus?

cayleyh 4y ago

New chess variant: Cyber. Each player has a budget and can buy a limited number of moves from the engine throughout the game :D