Cozying Up with Deep Blue
George Dvorsky
2005-03-02 00:00:00
URL


I arbitrarily picked an average difficultly
level and proceeded to get my ass kicked in
frighteningly short order. Somewhat discouraged,
I then tried at the easiest level. Once again, I
suffered an embarrassing thrashing.



With my dignity soiled, I vowed to improve my
chess skills. I wasn't going to let some puny

Palm Pilot

beat me at chess. I dusted off an old chess
manual and practiced some

standard
openings
and strategies. I can now
proudly say that I can beat my handheld at level
5. My goal is to beat it at level 8, maximum
difficulty.



Playing a computer at chess can be rather
humbling. As you're waiting for it to make its
move, watching the "thinking" progress bar move
from left to right, it's daunting to consider
how many moves it's evaluating. I'm happy if I
can think three to four moves ahead. The
computer can contemplate thousands every
second.



I'm sure

Garry
Kasparov
felt the same way back in
1996 when pitted against

Deep Blue
.
Now that computer could crunch the numbers.
Written in C and running under the AIX operating
system, Deep Blue was a massively parallel,
30-node, RS/6000, SP-based computer system
enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess
processors. Odds are those stats are meaningless
to you, but this one shouldn't be: This mother
could crunch 100,000,000 positions per second.



100,000,000 positions per second!




It's a wonder that
Kasparov could play against it at all. Of
course, there's more to chess than just raw
computation. It's a game of subtlety, nuance and
sophisticated psychology and strategyelements
that are far beyond the capabilities of even the
most powerful computers. In fact, prior to
Kasparov's defeat, some chess experts maintained
that computers would never be capable of
defeating

grandmasters
.
But thanks to Deep Blue and its successors, we
all know that this is in fact possible.



Kasparov's loss was indeed a deep shock to
the chess world. It was a significant milestone
in the history of chess, not just because a
reigning world champion finally lost against a
computer, but because of the ramifications to
the game itself. Did Kasparov's loss signify the
beginning of the end for meaningful human
interaction in professional chess? Would future
tournaments see humans as mere spectators to
machines?



More broadly, did Deep Blue's intrusion into
a previously sanctified human realm represent
the beginning of a larger trend? If computers
could now defeat even our grandmasters, what
else might they be capable of? Indeed, the
steady onslaught of

Moore's Law

and breakthroughs in

parallel
processing
has some fearing the rise
of

AI
and the subsequent delegation of human
minds. Are Homo sapiens poised for
obsolescence and even replacement?



Well, if Kasparov has his way, the answer is
noand not because he feels that humans can
continue to compete with computers. Rather,
Kasparov believes the future of chess can be
advanced through the cooperation of
computers with humans. Consequently, Kasparov's
idea of

Advanced
Chess,
where human-machine teams
compete against other human-machine teams,
offers an effective framework for how humanity
as a whole should manage its ongoing
relationship with its advancing technologies. To
avoid replacement, we need to establish a
symbiosis with our technologies and create
something greater than the sum of its parts.



Computer chess vs. human chess



In all fairness to Kasparov and other expert
chess players, computers still aren't able to
consistently defeat their human counterparts.
After losing to Deep Blue in the first game,
Kasparov rebounded by winning three games and
drawing two, defeating it by a final score of
four to two. Kasparov lost the 1997 rematch, but
managed a draw against its successor,

X3D Fritz

in 2003. Similarly, grandmaster

Vladimir
Kramnik
tied

Deep Fritz

in an eight-game tournament a year earlier. As
it currently stands, the tables are quite even
in terms of what the best computers can do
against the best players.



But what's interesting is not so much the
parity; it's that humans and machines play chess
so differently yet still come up even.
Computers and humans have unique weaknesses that
are clearly offset by their strengths.



It's generally acknowledged that computers
are superior calculators, while humans are
better at long-range planning. Computers cannot
be psychologically intimidated (something
Kasparov does very well against his human
opponents), nor are they capable of suffering
from fatigue or other physical problems (during
the 1984

World
Championships
, for example,

Anatoly
Karpov
lost 22 pounds and was
hospitalized several times as he battled
Kasparov in a protracted tournament that saw
them play well over 30 games). Computers are
also immune to making silly mistakes (Kramnik
lost game five against Fritz after making a
severe blunder).



Humans, on the other hand, can plan, bluff
and, most importantly, adapt. Kasparov, in all
his encounters with computers, tends to finish
more strongly than he begins. Even in my own
clashes against my Palm Pilot, I have noticed
that my computer opponent gets quite messed-up
when I open with the

Queen's
Gambit
. Consequently, that's now my
standard opening against it. The Palm, on the
other hand, cannot learn from my mistakes, and
has no idea that I fare very poorly in end game
scenarios.



Computers are also quite poor at recognizing
when something is irrelevant. During its

first match
against Kasparov
, for example, Deep
Blue eliminated an inconsequential pawn at a
critical point in the game. It's thought that
Deep Blue sensed no threat from Kasparov at the
time and that the move wouldn't detract from the
attack it was developing at the other side of
the board. It was merely being mindlessly
methodical by claiming the material.



Assistive devices



In consideration of these differences and
unique strengths, it's safe to say that the best
chess playing entity in existence today is
neither a computer nor a human, but rather a
computer and a human working together. As

Albert
Einstein
once remarked, "Computers
are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans
are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant;
together they are powerful beyond imagination."



Indeed, computers have changed the face of
chessnot just because they have proven to be
formidable opponents, but because they can also
act as potent assistive devices. Grandmasters
now use them extensively for planning and
practice. Exhaustive hash tables have been
generated by computers that map virtually all
end game scenarios involving up to five pieces.
Scenario analysis is now possible at an
unprecedented scale, including backward analysis
(starting from a position with a large edge and
moving back to a starting position) to find new
branches worth analyzing, and multi-variation
analysis mode to examine alternate tries worthy
of analysis.



Simply put, not using computers to assist in
chess play would be as silly as not using
calculators to help us do math. Further, when
looked at as prostheses, computers clearly
expand human capacities, helping us take our
activities and disciplines to the next level.
They enable us to partake in endeavors that were
previously cognitively impossible.



Recognizing this, Kasparov proposed a new
form of competition during the late 90s.
Inspired by his matches against computers,
Kasparov felt that humans and computers should
cooperate instead of contending with each other.
Called "Advanced Chess," the new style of play
would see human players team-up with a computer
and compete against another man-machine unit.



Kasparov got the ball rolling by organizing a
six-game Advanced Chess match against

Veselin
Topalov
in June of 1998, with
Kasparov using

Fritz 5

and Topalov using

ChessBase
7.0.
The match ended in a three-three
draw. Kasparov commented afterward, "My
prediction seems to be true that in Advanced
Chess it's all over once someone gets a won
position. This experiment was exciting and
helped spectators understand what's going on. It
was quite enjoyable and will take a very big and
prestigious place in the history of chess."



Since this initial match, Advanced Chess
tournaments have been scheduled annually in
Leon, Spain. Grandmaster

Viswanathan
Anand
, the winner of three titles, is
currently considered the world's best Advance
Chess player. After losing to Kramnik in 2002,
Anand commented, "I think in general people tend
to overestimate the importance of the computer
in the competitions. You can do a lot of things
with the computer but you still have to play
good chess...I don't really feel that the
computer alone can change the objective true to
the position."



Expanding on Anand's point, advocates of
Advanced Chess argue that the strength of a
player does not come from any of the components
of the human-computer team, but rather from the
symbiosis of the two. The combination of man and
machine results in a "player" that is endowed
with the computer's extreme power and accuracy
and the human's creativity and sagacity.



Ultimately, the combined skills of
knowledgeable humans and computer chess engines
can produce a result stronger than either alone.
Advanced Chess has resulted in heights never
before seen in chess. It has produced
blunder-free games with the beauty and quality
of both perfect tactical play and highly
meaningful strategic plans, and it has offered
chess aficionados remarkable insight into the
thought processes of strong human chess players
and strong chess computers.



Cooperation and merger, not obsolescence



With the rise in prominence of computers in
the chess world, Kasparov refused to throw up
his hands in despair and declare the end of
human involvement in the game. Instead, he
devised a new activity that would combine the
best of what the digital world had to offer with
that of the biological. The result was something
greater than the sum of its individual parts.



The rest of society should learn from this
example. Naturally, people are growing
increasingly wary of supercomputers and the
potential for AI; it's understandable that
people fear a future in which humans are
replaced by machines. But as the example of
Advanced Chess shows, that's not necessarily
what's going to happen. The development of AI
and other information technologies will continue
to advance based on how we choose to adapt to
them and how they adapt to us. Further, human
control over where and how advanced technologies
develop will have a significant impact on the
kinds of collaborative and symbiotic systems
that emerge.



Thanks to human ingenuity, our disciplines,
activities and goals will continue to change and
evolve, taking the human experience to
unprecedented places as we become capable of
things never before possible.



Like beating my Palm Pilot at level 6.