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Game Over: Kasparov v. The Machine
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This is a good documentary and an important moment in chess history. It's funny to think that by today's standards any decent home PC running Rybka 3 could make short work out of DB, it's makes you wonder what the tech be like in 20 years time
I think chess is deep enough that computer don't really threaten it. Overall it probally lifts the game for us to a new and precise level never before possible.
I have seen this at Kasparov played brilliantly
Although Garry lost to Deep Blue, Nigel Short compared it to a strongman losing a weight lifting competition to a fork lift truck.
Takes the "magic" out of the game if you use these engines. If you do the work yourself, or study with a program you can learn and get stronger. Which are all of you doing?
Excellent ! What a subject! Right on my alley.
Thank you!
Really?
There are no curves in chess, therefore the machine will always win.
Agreed?
Jun 6, 2009
0
#15
richie_and_oprah wrote:
CircleSquaredd wrote:
I think chess is deep enough that computer don't really threaten it. Overall it probally lifts the game for us to a new and precise level never before possible.
It ruined chess.
It extinguished and mortally wounded the public notion that man was better than machine. Because of Kasparov's loss, revenue dried up, and large companies were no longer interested in underwriting chess.
Fact.
It was the single worst thing that has happened to chess. Ever.
Chess was long considered a barometer for peak human intelligence and the Kasparov/Deep Blue event changed all that, and with thoses windds of change, the money went away to never return.
That's not so much a fact as what I call a true opinion. But it is totally true. The situation isn't so bleak, however; I still have hope that some prodigy will come along to destroy the machines, a John Connor or chess for those with inclinations for completely self-inconsistent-and-unrealistic-but-nevertheless-rather-entertaining-science-fiction-film-franchises. Quite simply, I'm very confident that the computers can be beaten, as will probably be proven by the computers of five years in the future, at the very least. Furthermore, computers still lack the ability to think, which, in chess, seems to be less important than incredible calculation powers, but nevertheless important, and so there is some (incredibly miniscule) hope. And I actually think there's a halfway decent hope that in a million games, Rybka would lose one of them to world-class GMs. Halfway decent being somewhere around 25%. However, it seems that, at least for now, Humanity's best hope is to play human-enhanced (i.e. playing on teams, with books, analysis boards, maybe oehter computers) against computer, and to experiment with different time controls, as this can definitely be a huge boon to the human players, there generally being a range where the computers are best.
About the original question (IBM cheating). It is extremely strange IBM never sold a chess program. I mean, you defeat the world champion and refuse to make money from this?? Just imagine how many would have bought a chess engine produced by IBM at that time. Even working on a general purpose computer, not on dedicated hardware like Deep Blue.
By the way: any chess program today knows absolutely nothing about chess. Things like "you need to break open the center with a pawn lever" or "you push your pawn to b4 to make a nice outpost for your knight on c5" are completely unknown to an engine. All they do is simply compute the best move, according to an evaluation function.
Computers haven't ruined chess because people don't play against them. That is like saying competitive running was ruined by the invention of the automobile. Computers have majorly progressed our understanding of the game, pros use them for home prep to test out the soundness of their ideas or to analyze their games for mistakes. Its wrong to anthropomorphize computers into "intelligent" beings. Calculators are better at math than us but nobody flouts at how smart they are.
Jun 6, 2009
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#18
I'm sorry, but human beings are way better at Mathematics than calculators are. Calculators have the advantage* in number-crunching, which is only one small part of Maths. Furthermore, competitive running may not have been ruined by automobiles, but it was ruined by steroids and other PEDs. You make an excellent point about computers having no understnading though.
*I would acutally argue that humans are better at crunching numbers than calculators, but it's a drawn-out, technical argument with almost no value in it, so I'll just skip it.
Jun 6, 2009
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#19
For those interested in the movie AND the games of the 1997 match, buy the DVD -- it has bonus material of the games, with each move called out in a very robotic fashion.
Personally, I think the IBM team did some unethical things. But let's be honest, the evidence of human intervention in Game 2 isn't strong enough, even with the repetition idea. While I enjoyed the movie, even its conspiratorial angles, I have to agree with GM Joel Benjamin's assessment that it should be called A Study in Paranoia. In his book American Grandmaster, he rightly points out that some of the scenes are ridiculously paranoid (e.g. the window-watching scene).
Jun 6, 2009
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#20
OK, I should have mentioned that GM Benjamin was part of the IBM team. But even if there was human intervention during the games, there's no reason to think Benjamin was in on it. IBM would have no reason to include him on that cheating aspect, if they indeed did cheat that way.
P.S. If Deep Blue freezes up or shuts down, I call it a forfeit. None of this repair-and-replay business.
There is a film about the Kasparov-Deep Blue match that Garry lost. The premise is that IBM cheated. It's a fun watch for most any chess fan, and this is the full version. I had seen a much abbreviated compilation of clips before and this is much better. Eight parter so pour yourself some coffee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKy2KUu48Bc