Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Aberden University plans supercomputer to beat "greatest grandmasters"

Author: Landon Rabern

Date: 16:00:55 06/04/01

Go up one level in this thread


On June 04, 2001 at 18:48:40, Marc van Hal wrote:

>On June 04, 2001 at 17:44:56, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On June 04, 2001 at 16:03:36, John Hatcher wrote:
>>
>>>Here is a news report today from Reuters which may be of interest:
>>>
>>>**********************************************************
>>>
>>>(Reuters)
>>>
>>>Scottish University Sets Up First Chess Doctorate
>>>
>>>EDINBURGH, Scotland (Reuters) - A Scottish university is setting up the world's
>>>first chess doctorate which its creator hopes will lead to the development of
>>>supercomputers capable of beating even the greatest of grandmasters.
>>>
>>>``My computers will be as clever as 1,000 Einsteins,'' course director Peter
>>>Vas, professor of artificial intelligence at Scotland's Aberdeen University,
>>>told Reuters Monday.
>>>
>>>A keen chess player himself, Vas is looking for around 40 graduates for the
>>>three-year PhD course, which also aims to push back the boundaries of artificial
>>>intelligence, creating computers that can think and learn by themselves.
>>>
>>>He hopes former Russian world chess champion Garry Kasparov will become a
>>>lecturer.
>>>
>>>Only the brainiest need bother applying -- prospective candidates must be highly
>>>proficient at math and computing and be in the top flight of their national
>>>chess rankings.
>>>
>>>``There will be a grandmaster entrance exam,'' Vas said, although he denied
>>>reports that they had to beat the grandmaster in a game to get in.
>>>
>>>``Obviously we can't ask for them to beat a grandmaster because if it was
>>>Kasparov playing 100 people simultaneously, he would still beat them all,'' Vas
>>>said. ``Just showing the potential will be enough.''
>>>
>>>Vas said the new supercomputers would have the combined intelligence of the
>>>world's finest human minds.
>>>
>>>However, they would not live up to the apocalyptic fantasies of some Hollywood
>>>film directors and get so smart they tried to destroy humanity.
>>>
>>>``An intelligent thing will always stop short of destroying itself,'' Vas said.
>>>``There's no chance of that happening.''
>>>
>>>Even Kasparov, who has met tough electronic challengers in IBM's 'Deep Blue' and
>>>its bigger, better cousin 'Deeper Blue', stands to gain.
>>>
>>>``Playing something better than him will help him improve his game,'' Vas said.
>>>*******************
>>>END
>>
>>
>>
>>The tone and the content sound like an April 1st joke.
>>
>>
>>"Only the brainiest need bother applying -- prospective candidates must be
>>highly proficient at math and computing and be in the top flight of their
>>national chess rankings."
>>
>>
>>What a major mistake. Strong chess players are not the people of choice to
>>create a strong chess computer.
>>
>>
>>
>>    Christophe
>
>
>Well then this is where your wrong human chess players are the only beings who
>are capabale to see the positional  moves better then the programs of today will
>And i do not think that keeping the same course of programing ever will be able
>to see the positional moves (a combining with neural networks shall be an
>extremely improvement for positional moves and planning
>Today many people still think that every opening is just playable I already
>showed many times that this is not the case
>Even many openingsbooks from programs contain these mistakes
>Then again I have seen programs of today ruin winning positions
>and even where glad to draw that winning position.
>
>
>For the matter tactical moves are moves wich capture a piece,threaten to capture
>a piece giving check ,threaten to give check mate,threaten to give mate.
>giving pat threaten to give pat
>
>positional moves are moves wich are the moves when there is nothing to do and
>enable a tactical move (Tarrasch).

I have done some testing will a neural network evaluation in my program for my
independent study.  The biggest problem I ran into was the slowness of
calculating all the sigmoids(I actually used tanh(NET)).  It drastically cuts
down the nps and gets spanked by my handcrafted eval.  I got moderate results
playing with set ply depths no set time controls, but that isn't saying much.

Regards,

Landon W. Rabern



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.