Chess grandmaster to battle supercomputer

davidmc

Last modified: June 21, 2005, 7:29 AM PDT
By Graeme Wearden
Special to CNET News.com

The United Kingdom's top chess player is going head to "heads" with Hydra, a cluster PC in the United Arab Emirates.

The latest battle between man and machine is taking place at London's Wembley Centre, where Michael Adams is the latest player to take on a supercomputer.

In a contest that has echoes of Gary Kasparov's epic encounter with IBM's Deep Blue, Adams and the Hydra computer will play up to six games over the next week, for a prize fund of $150,000. While Adams will be seated at Wembley, his opponent is remaining at its Abu Dhabi base. According to the official tournament Web site, the Hydra project is financed by the Abu Dhabi-based PAL Group. Programming has been handled by a team including Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz, Christopher Lutz and Muhammad Nasir Ali.

http://msn-cnet.com.com/Chess+grand...755445&GT1=6556

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MountainPro

these guys are amazing, i cant beat my computer in 'simpleton' mode.

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limerickman

Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in 1997 - and Deep Blue (owned by IBM) was disassembled.
Kasparov has been gunning for a rematch but IBM won't play.

I agree Pro, these guys are fantastic.
My chess computer is gathering dust because he refuses to let me even get a draw !

MountainPro

i worked for IBM during that period as an engineer (mobile thinkpad and netvista servers), i remember the posters up on the wall of the labs and all the hype surrounding it....'its our big guy against the russians'...or something like that..

Computers work on a level of pure logic, they dont suffer from mental fatigue or stress...they have every eventuality covered.

the new Hydra challenge should be interesting, but what tactics can one use against a computer? They don't share the same human fallabilities..

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StartledPancake

"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing."
Emo Philips

limerickman

It's interesting that you say that computers work on logic because that was the problem with Deep Blue.

Kasparov, when he started to lose the match, muttered darkly about DB not "thinking logically" as he put it.
He said that when you play a machine, it's just a machine, it will calculate all the variables and take the least hazardous choice based on those variables.
But with DB, Kasparov maintained that it had somehow developed the ability to think on it's feet and to learn the nuances of gambit/strategy.
In other words, DB could think and take risk.
Which he said was very unmachine-like.

The guys who operated DB during the match were in a room off the playing area - to which neither Kasparov nor his team ever had access.
Kasparov began to allege that instead of the room being full of IBM technicians, he reckoned that there were several grandmasters AND DB playing against him in that room.

davidmc

I believe the Human can have an advantage in that he can make a "feint" or "disrtacting move" & the 'puter won't be able to process it because it is illogical. Wonder if the 'puter can process/account for "sacrifices"
I used to play all day long. Ever heard of the movie " Searching for Bobby Fischer" I liked it. Worth noting: "An algorithm (the word is derived from the name of the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi), is a finite set of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task which, given an initial state, will terminate in a corresponding recognizable end-state (contrast with heuristic). Algorithms can be implemented by computer programs, although often in restricted forms; an error in the design of an algorithm for solving a problem can lead to failures in the implementing program.

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__________________
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
George Carlin
US comedian and actor (1937 - )

MountainPro

yes, you are correct, the human is basically playing against a chess program written by another human. If the program or algorithm contains a flaw, the execution of the program will be flawed. All a computer can do is execute a set of instructions.

However, AI (artificial intellegence) has come a long way recently and human behaviour is becoming easier to duplicate. Basic computers cannot think (and never will in my opinion) because thought is a bio-electrical process. It requires more than a silicon cored microprocessor. Until true 'cyborgs' are created only then will a computer be able to interface with an organic biological tissue to create independant thought patterns. Blood supply can be simulated with small battery powerer precision pumps and the electrical system can be supplied with signal processors to keep the tissue from degrading and the computer will be able to take information from the tissue rather than providing it with information, such as environmental data. Sensors to duplicate the human senses send information to and from the processors to create a feedback loop in order to manipulate the electrical currents in the tissue causing different (non logic based) chemical reactions, this fed back to the processors to engage mechanical actuators to create physical movement.

Before you know it the machine will be able to think.

This, ofcourse, is the stuff of Sci-Fi, in the meantime we will have to settle for the best chess players against the best programmers. (exciting)

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crithater

Did'nt Kasparov beat it the first couple of times and then they programed it to his style and beat him......just wondering.....Crit

limerickman

You're right - he did beat IBM's first version, Deep Thought.

Then IBM came back with Deep Blue and GK was beaten by it.

The BBC - Storyville Prog. - did a very good documentary about GK playing Deep Blue.