This is the end

[akots]

Alas, every good thing has to come to an end.

When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, there was still hope just because it were a super machine with a super program.

Now, Fritz 9 had beaten Kramnik in a match 4:2 and mankind lost its battle against AI. [sad]

The Terminator time is coming! [charge]

For details see:

http://www.rag.de/microsite_chess_com/

[Kemal]

Hopefully Schwarzenegger knows how to play chess too then... ;)

If I understood correctly, Fritz 9 is actually a far more advanced chess program than Deep Blue was, isn't it? And that the worrying news should be that contrary to Kasparov, Kramnik had the opportunity to study and prepare on his opponent, but he actually seems to have done really well except for one blackout moment, costing him a game and thus, since needing to force a win, the match.

[Rik Meleet]

Then switch to Bridge. The (Dutch) worldchampion Computer-bridge; Jack, is strong, but not on human level yet.
http://www.jackbridge.nl/eindex.htm

And since in bridge there are always unknown elements in the form of cards you don't see I think there'll always be room to have moves that are not the mathematically best moves, but can win. Computers are not known to do those moves.

[Kemal]

Yep, I suppose AIs excell in chess for a large part because it doesn't involve luck, only skill.

[akots]

The Terminator time is coming! [charge]
[aargh]

With bridge it is just a matter of time the programmers and good players want to invest into a good piece of software. Besides, it is not that popular compared to chess. [butcher]

[Melifluous]

quote:Originally posted by akots

...
When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue
...


Kasparov didn't lose, IBM cheated.

quote:Taken from here (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.10/chess.html)
In game two, an even more bitter disadvantage became apparent. At that point, a single move on the part of Deep Blue shocked not just Garry but the whole grandmaster community hungrily following along. Rather than capture an exposed pawn, the machine chose another route - a strange sacrifice that in '97 seemed far beyond the strategic foresight of a computer. "It was an incredibly refined move," says Seirawan, "of defending while ahead to cut out any hint of countermoves, and it sent Garry into a tizzy."

Nothing the machine had done in the 1996 match, nor anything it had done in game one, suggested it could or would make such calculations. The move represented a style of play out of keeping with anything that had gone before. "There were only three explanations," says Malcolm Pein, chess correspondent for The Daily Telegraph of London, who worked for IBM on the Web site for the match. "Either we were seeing some kind of vast quantum leap in chess programming that none of us knew about, or we were seeing the machine calculate far more deeply than anyone heard it could, or a human had intervened during the game."


[meli]

[Socrates]

That blunder Kramnik did last week is pretty stupid... Without that, it could have been 3.5-2.5 or even 3-3. But don't be scared, akots. Ukelele has been busted for a long time, and people still play the game. Just like Backgammon, which was entirely busted recently.

[col]

Even the best Go programs are barely above beginner standard btw.

[akots]

On a sidenote, there is another sad news. The famous international grandmaster David Bronshtein died at the age of 82. [sad]

Details, a short biography, and a nice video featuring Yasser Seirawan can be found here:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsroom2.asp?id=3525

[akots]

quote:Originally posted by col
Even the best Go programs are barely above beginner standard btw.

That is not quite true since a few nice pieces of software appeared recently. They are not freeware though. Even Go++ is not that bad: http://www.goplusplus.com/

Fuck, sorry col, I somehow misclicked and edited your post. If some of the admins make this un-happen please. [blush]

[col]

Dont worry about it....just some stuff that bridge programs arent too good. Zia has a standing $1 million bet none will beat him.

Bronstein was one of the greats of the 50s and 60s.

[Melifluous]

Unhappening cannot happen, the text is lost :(

But I'll try and add to the topic by pointing out that chickens are also getting into the human beating act Here (http://www.casinochicken.com/)

[meli]

[Beam]

The computer beating the top in chess hardly is a surprise imo considering the investments being made by companies like IBM. And although the computer is better than humans in many other areas it still is far from even coming close to humans in many other areas. I guess all Civ addicts know this first hand. ;)

If there is a challenge to the chess community it is to accept that computers can beat them, make sure human players can't cheat any means using info from computers in human-human play and bring interest in chess back to the public.

And if there is a challenge to the computer industry it is to develop in a way where a computer can handle and get the best out of a partly defined or undefined ruleset which has many useful apps imho but I might be to Utopic here.