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I remember people saying no computer could ever beat the best humans at chess.

by xapata 4y ago

nmfisher 4y ago
Would you be willing to play a computer at chess if there was a possibility on any given move that it would squash you like a pancake?
- taeric 4y ago
  There was a kid with a broken finger recently... I mean, you aren't wrong. But we can almost certainly do better than where we currently are.
- xapata 4y ago
  There's a possibility that all the particles in my body might leap simultaneously one foot to the left, or that I might transform into a bowl of petunias. The question is how likely playing chess or riding in a car might squash me like a pancake. We accept a not insignificant risk by driving ourselves and riding in cars driven by humans. Happily, it's not hard to estimate the risk that a machine-controlled car poses by letting them roam around. We can compare that with human-controlled cars and start shifting between controllers according to their risk profiles. I'd much rather have a machine-controlled car than a human asleep at the wheel.
semi-extrinsic 4y ago
When do you remember this from? In the mid 1970's, computers playing chess had in 20 years gone from being utterly trivial to beat if you know the rules, to easily beating amateurs and playing mildly interesting games against top humans like Greenblatt vs Bobby Fischer in '77. And it was clear that the power of the chess computers would keep scaling with Moore's law as they could look further into the future and store more of a complete opening book. In the late 80's the first versions of Deep Blue were playing serious games against Kasparov under standard time control, even though it took until 1997 to beat him - one can argue that Kasparov was also still developing during this time, since his rating peaked in 1999. Can you find a citation from after 1980 from someone with a bit of understanding of chess and computers, saying that computers would never beat humans?
- xapata 4y ago
  In the 70s, there was widespread misunderstanding of what artificial intelligence would be good at. Take a look at Hubert Dreyfus' _What Computers Can't Do_ (1972). To be fair, he was correct in some respects, but I think with flawed reasoning.

I remember people saying no computer could ever beat the best humans at chess.

by xapata 4y ago

I remember people saying no computer could ever beat the best humans at chess.

Would you be willing to play a computer at chess if there was a possibility on any given move that it would squash you like a pancake?

taeric 4y ago
There was a kid with a broken finger recently... I mean, you aren't wrong. But we can almost certainly do better than where we currently are.
xapata 4y ago
There's a possibility that all the particles in my body might leap simultaneously one foot to the left, or that I might transform into a bowl of petunias. The question is how likely playing chess or riding in a car might squash me like a pancake. We accept a not insignificant risk by driving ourselves and riding in cars driven by humans. Happily, it's not hard to estimate the risk that a machine-controlled car poses by letting them roam around. We can compare that with human-controlled cars and start shifting between controllers according to their risk profiles. I'd much rather have a machine-controlled car than a human asleep at the wheel.

semi-extrinsic 4y ago

When do you remember this from? In the mid 1970's, computers playing chess had in 20 years gone from being utterly trivial to beat if you know the rules, to easily beating amateurs and playing mildly interesting games against top humans like Greenblatt vs Bobby Fischer in '77. And it was clear that the power of the chess computers would keep scaling with Moore's law as they could look further into the future and store more of a complete opening book. In the late 80's the first versions of Deep Blue were playing serious games against Kasparov under standard time control, even though it took until 1997 to beat him - one can argue that Kasparov was also still developing during this time, since his rating peaked in 1999. Can you find a citation from after 1980 from someone with a bit of understanding of chess and computers, saying that computers would never beat humans?

xapata 4y ago
In the 70s, there was widespread misunderstanding of what artificial intelligence would be good at. Take a look at Hubert Dreyfus' _What Computers Can't Do_ (1972). To be fair, he was correct in some respects, but I think with flawed reasoning.