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Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

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Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#41

Post by whack »

keiferski wrote: post #27

Question for those knowledgeable on AI: what sort of game would be easy for a human to understand, but difficult or impossible for a computer to play or easily defeat humans? I imagine one based purely on randomness, like dice, would be one. I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse, [1] due to their agglutinative grammatical structure. Not sure if tha…

Leetcode style coding competitions.

Short story writing competitions featuring specific prompts/themes.

SAT test taking.

Short story writing might be more subjective, but the other two are much more objective in nature, and can be easily gamified. AFAIK, AI has a long way to go before it can engage in anything that requires thinking critically.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#42

Post by exDM69 »

keiferski wrote: post #27

Question for those knowledgeable on AI: what sort of game would be easy for a human to understand, but difficult or impossible for a computer to play or easily defeat humans? I imagine one based purely on randomness, like dice, would be one. I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse, [1] due to their agglutinative grammatical structure. Not sure if tha…

Not the answer you're looking for, but motor racing and simulations of it.

Sounds counter intuitive, but despite doing fast laps when on the circuit alone, even the best AI racers have difficulty surviving a race distance in close pack racing without crashing.

Roborace, the autonomous racing league in development has barely managed to put two cars on track and doing an overtake safely. A lot of money and state of the art research has gone into this.

I expect that AI will be able to beat humans on the (simulated) race track in a decade or two but we aren't there yet.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#44

Post by natrys »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #20

I believe its very much the arbitrary numbers we gave to pieces that we coded into our brute forced chess AIs that has allowed new chess AIs to be better. As this article hinted, its understanding of piece value fluctuates based on the rules of the game but also as the game changes. Alpha Zero makes sacrifices human players wouldn't because they're too wedded to the idea that a queen is 9, a rook is 5 and a knight/bi…

Stockfish parameters aren't arbitrary, hardcoded or static. Vast amount of computational power went into "tuning" those parameters to see which combination of values in which stage etc yields the best outcome. In that sense it's not dissimilar to Alpha Zero except the latter does this a lot more at much higher meta levels.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#45

Post by thom »

jka wrote: post #30

This is a slight tangent to the article, but in the hope HN readers will find this as fascinating as I have recently... There's a three-way battle developing between AlphaZero (as described in the article, courtesy of DeepMind), LCZero[5] (derived from LeelaZero[1] -- an open source interpretation of the same principles as AZ), and Stockfish[2] (a long-standing open source chess engine that has recently begun includi…

Also very much worth reading GM Matthew Sadler's coverage of the superfinal games in the articles, section, e.g.:

https://tcec-chess.com/articles/Sufi_18_-_Sadler.pdf

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#46

Post by glaberficken »

keiferski wrote: post #27

Question for those knowledgeable on AI: what sort of game would be easy for a human to understand, but difficult or impossible for a computer to play or easily defeat humans? I imagine one based purely on randomness, like dice, would be one. I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse, [1] due to their agglutinative grammatical structure. Not sure if tha…

Bridge (the cards game) has seen a lot of research over the past decades without the bots ever becoming "world class good".

Of course you could argue that it is a difficult game for humans to understand as well =) So it might not fit exactly what you prompted for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bridge

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#47

Post by brmgb »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #25

How widespread amongst chess experts is the premise that "AI ruined chess" ?

Not very. It is poetic licence on the part of the writer.

AI had a real impact on how the game was played however. After the advent of computer evaluation, there was a broad consensus that the way to win was to play solid positions. In a way, professional chess became more about not losing than winning. Anish Giri who peaked at number 3 in the world a few years ago is nicknamed the artist because he keeps drawing. Some found that pretty boring.

Funnily, salvation might actually have come from AI. AlphaZero doesn't play boring games and reminded everyone that favoring activity and initiative is a viable strategy.

Still, all things considered, streaming had probably a much bigger impact on chess than AI in the last few years.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#48

Post by dh5 »

me_me_me wrote: post #23
in3d wrote: post #17

There are promising chess variants where all draws are eliminated: no black castling or no black short-castling Armageddon (draws are counted as wins for black). I wish they would test them instead of their picks - they are still chess unlike some variants they tested, which are probably too radical if you want to attract current chess players.

I got back to chess few years back, and following scene a bit. The classical long for chess is basically dead. Its boring, with majority draws (close to solved game - de0incentivizing aggressive play). I am glad there is shift towards shorter time formats. Shorter time control creates more urgency and allows to play subpar moves to throw off your opponent. Its much more interesting to observe. Armagedon rules are bei…

I strongly disagree with the assertion that chess is a "close to solved game" in human OTB play in particular.

Top GMs currently will probably score 0/12 against Leela/Stockfish. We see innovations frequently in recent years as we learn from engines themselves, h4/h5 pushes as a simple example, but also in terms of style like favoring rapid development and attacking play.

Yes, draws are frequent but that doesn't mean there is no excitement in long games. Rapid/blitz is damn fun to watch and play but there's a certain, different kind of elegance in carefully considered moves as well.

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#49

Post by throwaway49990 »

keiferski wrote: post #27

Question for those knowledgeable on AI: what sort of game would be easy for a human to understand, but difficult or impossible for a computer to play or easily defeat humans? I imagine one based purely on randomness, like dice, would be one. I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse, [1] due to their agglutinative grammatical structure. Not sure if tha…

Try Magic: the Gathering.

>I remember reading somewhere that languages like Finnish and Hungarian are difficult for computers to parse

I wonder how much of that is due to AI researchers being speakers of Indo-European languages and not being able to wrap their mind around languages outside that family

Re: Exploring new forms of chess using artificial intelligence

#50

Post by brmgb »

hartator wrote: post #24
Quarrelsome wrote: post #20

I believe its very much the arbitrary numbers we gave to pieces that we coded into our brute forced chess AIs that has allowed new chess AIs to be better. As this article hinted, its understanding of piece value fluctuates based on the rules of the game but also as the game changes. Alpha Zero makes sacrifices human players wouldn't because they're too wedded to the idea that a queen is 9, a rook is 5 and a knight/bi…

I thought queen was 8, rook 5, and bishop/knights 3?

Generally, a queen is considered to be worth more than a rook and a bishop.

Also, knights and bishops are worth the same except they are not. Knights are good in closed play but you can't mate with two knights and a king. Bishops are definitely better when there is more space.

But, the value is just a simplification to help players assess situation. A piece which can't be played actively is worth nothing.

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