Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 15:46:29 05/10/00
Go up one level in this thread
On May 10, 2000 at 15:54:34, Hans Gerber wrote:
>On May 09, 2000 at 21:56:15, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>
>>That is painting with a very wide brush. As I have pointed out on multiple
>>occasions, what you are asking for is impossible to provide. Within the realm
>>of practical solutions. You _could_ lock DB, the operator, and Kasparov inside
>>a steel vault, with no windows, no external cables, sufficient shielding to
>>make certain no form of magnetic radiation could penetrate to the interior.
>>
>>_then_ you could be reasonable sure no outside influence was being used. But
>>I don't think _anyone_ would consent to playing under such conditions. You
>>could not have light in the room, unless it was battery powered, otherwise
>>some sort of modulation could be used...
>>
>>So preventing cheating was not doable.
>>
>>Providing some sort of 'audit' capability is therefore not doable, by
>>simple induction. If a human could influence the game, it could influence
>>whatever 'log' was produced at the same time, to make the influence
>>undetectable.
>>
>>I don't see any way to prevent such. Nor do I see any reason to spend a lot
>>of time trying to prevent such. If you don't trust your opponent, don't play
>>him. After all, it _is_ a "game"...
>>
>
>You're talking about something I didn't write.
>
>Sure it's a game, but the moment we're talking about a machine as the best
>player of the world, we should at least have some certainty that the machine was
>playing on its own. No matter how difficult that could be "doable". Perhaps it
>might _not_ be doable... but then can't you see the consequences?
>
>Kasparov explained that one single intervention from outside could change the
>character of a whole game. Hence such a thing must be made impossible.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>
>>
>>We will just have to agree to disagree. One classic case from my background.
>>In 1984, we were playing "NuChess" at the 1984 ACM event that year, using a
>>4 cpu Cray XMP. We were almost lost, and played a very odd/ugly looking knight
>>move. Our opponent immediately thought he could win either of two pawns, an
>>outside passed a pawn, or a center pawn that would wreck our pawn structure.
>>He went for the center pawn, and that knight on B8 was used to take his last
>>bishop (a trade) leaving us with a passed pawn that could not be stopped by the
>>opponent's king.
>>
>>We were _never_ able to reproduce Nb8 again. And we ran it literally hundreds
>>of times. So did the program play that move on its own? Or did it have help?
>>
>>_I_ know the answer, as does Harry and Bert as we were all sitting there and
>>watching, and we _all_ criticized the move as silly. Unless you assume the
>>opponent doesn't know about 'the square of the pawn' and goes for the center
>>pawn rather than the more dangerous a-pawn.
>
>
>Do you expect me to doubt your own experience? No, I have a lot of respect for
>you. But I must also say that I don't understand what your example has to do
>with our question of control.
>
>I think I understand your logic of reasoning. You want to say that such an
>extreme execption would destroy all attempts of an objective control because
>reproducability is most important to prove non-existence of outer influence. It
>seems as if you are blinded by your own great experience.
>
>I'm not on your height as far as that class is concerned. But from a scientific
>view this doesn't matter. The basics of science have to be respected everywhere.
>If your machine's output, which is the inside process as you had explained, is
>sufficiently controlled then it doesn't matter if a certain move can't be
>reproduced. All that is important is that the logfiles look "a bit" different in
>that case of the exception.
>
>Just for the general understanding, would you agree that the logfiles had to
>contain some data that could prove that the move Nb8 was "somewhere" in the
>thought process of the machine?
The program liked the same move from ply 1, until ply 10. Right at
the last minute, we saw a line like this:
10 >>0 Nb8!!
my move: Nb8
the >>0 is a simple fail high notation we used. Nb8 showed up _nowhere_ else
in the output. And crafty behaves the same in many positions. It changes its
mind at the last second to a brand new move, with no prior mention of that move
at all. How do you prove it wasn't a human's suggested move if the program
won't reproduce it?
> Or do you want to say that such a move might
>have come "out of the blue sky"? In that case let me give you a hint; just
>implement a code that says "machine in the state of genius" and you have saved
>the orthodoxe situation again. :)
>
>>
>>How do you 'audit' that? I have seen several _other_ cases where a move was
>>never reproduced. That one one for us. In 1987 in Orlando, we had deep thought
>>beat, but rather than playing the move that absolutely crushed him (he had
>>already failed low pondering that move and we had failed high searching the
>>right move) CB switched to a new move at the last second, one it apparently
>>thought was better. It lost quickly. We could _never_ reproduce that move.
>>And I ran it over 1,000 times during the next month, burning up a couple of
>>Crays every night trying to make it fail again...
>>
>
>You are certainly a case for interdisciplinary studies. I don't think that you
>have to believe in the supernatural... I don't understand why you have such a
>big problem with that incidence. This has nothing to do with cheating of course.
>It seems to be a philosophical problem. Deterministic expectations and such.
Nothing to do with cheating, but everything to do with showing that you can't
reproduce normal behavior multiple times. So how could you _ever_ validate an
experiment as you might in chemistry or physics?
Computer Chess is different...
>
>>
>>There is a long distance between "in theory/principle" and "in reality"...
>
>Yes, you'll have to find a practical solution to guarantee a pratically doable
>control.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>My point is that preventing 'crime' is _impossible_. Otherwise, after a couple
>>>of thousand years, banks would no longer be robbed. Web sites wouldn't be
>>>broken into. Computers wouldn't be vandalized.
>>>
>>>There are some things you can _not_ prevent.
>>
>>
>>Sorry for following up my own post. I had to make a quick exit earlier to go
>>fix a computer problem...
>
>This is another such problem. If we could find a certain consense between our
>formerly so different positions, it could help as such. I take for granted that
>we here don't want to see the other man busted, the way Fischer wanted to see
>his opponents ego crush. We are dealing with a most important problem for
>computerchess in general.
>
>(BTW in the case of the aftermath of the second game Hsu surely should have
>given K. the prints. So he had given him something that hadn't proven anything
>but a friendly connection. In that case K. might have won some game more, if he
>could have taken advantage of some details, but he overall research would be
>still going on now! In the long run computers will be stronger than man anyway.
>So why hurry up? Hsu did a really bad job. He "won" and at the same time has
>lost his field of research! He must even face attacks of being a cheater.
>Justified or not.)
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.