Author: Don Dailey
Date: 08:42:07 07/29/98
Go up one level in this thread
On July 29, 1998 at 07:54:07, Guido Schimmels wrote: >As FIDE rules were not designed with computers as possible opponents in mind, > they don't apply to computers. In fact computers break the FIDE rules in many > ways, if you think of it: >1) They don't note the moves on the form >2) They don't move the pieces nor handle the clock >3) They access external information during the game (opening book, tablebases) > >Ok, 1) and 2) could be easily addressed, but what about 3) ? > >If I played and Open tournament and had to play a computer, >if I would use my opening and endgame library during the game and analyse on >a little extra chess-board how could the arbiter say I'm cheating if I only do >what >the computer does itself ? > >I really think it is very important for the computer chess community to agree >on special rules for computer-human play - or what sense does it make to >discuss if computers are already GM level or not if we don't define the >underlying game conditions ? And the game conditions have a *huge* >influence on the rating we observe. >When Bob negates micro's to be on GM level, his typical argument is: >Look at ICC, computer's have still big weaknesses which players on ICC >will find out quickly and then humiliate them. >But are the conditions computer play on ICC fair or not ? I don't know, at least >they are very much different from for example the Kasparov vs. Deeper Blue >mach. Deeper Blue surely benefited highly from the human interference between >the games and from the special opening preparation against Kasparov (ok, >Kasparov >deviated from his usual opening play, but so the threat was stronger than the >execution !) > >I hope I could make my point clear. >So when we talk about computer strength, which conditions do we talk about ? > >- Guido - Guido, Your opening another can of worms here, all these issues have been discussed many times in many difference forums. Most people don't consider these points reasonable in view of who the opponent is, for instance blind players are not banned for some of these reasons. On point 3, your argument is wrong, computers do not access external information during the game. The opening book and any tablebases are internal to the computing system. Your argument is similar to the one that says computers move pieces around (in memory) which is cheating. But humans do this too. Data on disk is just part of their memory. I personally believe things should be looked at in terms of "computing systems." A computer is a computing system, and a single person is a computing system. But there is no reason in principle a computing system could not be 2 humans working together, or a single human with access to chess books during the game. Any particular computing system should be a separate entity and rated differently. Joe with chess books, would be a different computing system than Joe by himself. Most of these are silly and probably would not be considered as viable computing systems to a tournament director. Imagine a computing system that composed of a 32 man database, just a single lookup to find the best possible move. Would we view this any differently that a machine calculating furiously to come up with a move? We probably would because we think that chess programs are doing smart things when they calculate but "cheating" when they just do a lookup! But it's all semantics and that's all it is. - Don
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