Author: Evgenii Manev
Date: 05:21:22 04/27/05
Go up one level in this thread
On April 26, 2005 at 18:24:02, Mike Byrne wrote: >On April 26, 2005 at 10:33:01, José Antônio Fabiano Mendes wrote: > >> Harvard Business Review, April 2005 >> >>Speaking of analytic prowess, what was the significance of your famous matches >>with IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer, Deep Blue? >> >>For a start, they were a huge promotion for the game. Nothing made chess more >>popular than the match I won against Deep Blue in 1996 and the match I lost in >>1997. The official Web site got 72 million hits during the six games of the >>second match in New York, which was a higher daily rate than the Atlanta Olympic >>Games Web site got in 1996. > >That is a lot of hits and I think the interest in the matches was great. I >think if somebody came up with a Name Your Program/32 CPUs - that would create a >lot of excitement. I favor Crafty , but obviously there are other programs out >there as well. Maybe this something AMD can capitalize on with their new dual >core opterons. > > >> >>But the matches meant a lot more than that to me. Competing with a computer was >>first and foremost a scientific experiment for me. I thought it was very >>important for society to start communicating with computers, and I knew that >>chess was the only field where man and machine could meet. You can’t do it with >>mathematics or with literature. Chess, however, lies somewhere in between. I >>believed that it would be an ideal playing field for comparing human intuition >>with the brute force of a machine’s calculation. > >Kasparov echoed similar comments in 1996 when he spoke after the 6th game of >tthe first match. It sounds good, but the reality is that the chess programs >today are still number crunching calculators. It is about nodes evaluated and >which ones are evaluated and how decisions are made on those evaluations. I'm >not really surprised that a machine can now calculate xxx millions nps and play >at a GM chess level. It still amazes me that any human ( like a Kasparov, >Fischer, Karpov etc) can outplay a such a machine. > > >> >>The yardstick of victory, I think, should be this: If the best human player—on >>his best day, at his peak—can still beat the best machine, then we can say that >>the chess master is superior to the machine. And for now, I believe that chess >>masters like me still have the upper hand. I can beat the machine unless I make >>a fatal unforced error. But when the chess master can no longer defeat the >>machine on his best day, then we will have to take a cold, hard look at issues >>such as artificial intelligence and the relationship between man and machine. > >I would agree that Kasparov play subpar for the second match and that is the >main reason why he lost. That is why all of us were a little disappointed there >was no rematch - and not beat a dead horse - but Kasparov's knee jerk reaction >after the second match sealed the decision about the third match. If he was a >little more diplomatic, perhaps there could have been a third match. > > >> >>Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone shared the same spirit of experiment. The >>day after the New York match against Deep Blue, the one I lost in 1997, IBM >>stock immediately jumped 2.5% to a ten-year high. It continued to rise >>dramatically for weeks. For some reason, Lou Gerstner did not invite me to the >>next IBM shareholders’ meeting to take a bow! > >Maybe Gerstner would have invited Kasparov if Kasparov did not bite the hand >that was feeding him and accused the IBM team (anmd indirectly IBM) of cheating >-- HELLO -- anybody home. For somebody who see so far ahead in a chess game, >it amazes me that Kasparov simply cannot connect the dots on this issue. > >>But seriously, I wish that IBM had >>accepted my offer for a tiebreaker. To my mind, IBM actually committed a crime >>against science. By claiming victory so quickly in the man-versus-machine >>contest, the company dissuaded other companies from funding such a complicated >>and valuable project again, and that’s the real tragedy. > >The only crime committed was Kasparov's false and misleading accusation. He is >total state of denial. IBM did not dissuade anybody from funding another match. > Kasparov's own outlandish behavior after the match was sufficient to scare any >company from sponsoring another match. Think about it, what company would like >to spend millions of dollars for science and good PR - when at the end of the >day, if Kasparov loses, the odds are that he will probably accuse your company >cheating. Not a very hard decision to make in light of what happened. > > >> >> Did it hurt your pride to be beaten by a computer? >> >>No, not at all. Let me explain this by telling you a little anecdote. In 1769, >>the Hungarian engineer Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen constructed a chess-playing >>machine for the amusement of the Austrian empress Maria Theresa. It looked like >>a purely mechanical device, shaped like a person. And it played chess very well. >>But the machine was a fake. There was a chess master cleverly hidden inside the >>device who decided all the moves. > >This about the worst analogy that Kasparov could make - except if he wanted to >keep up the accusation of cheating alive. He is essentially saying the DB team >cheated here. > > >> >>In some ways, Deep Blue was also a fake. The machine I played with in 1996 and >>1997 had no history. Records of its past games were better guarded than >>top-secret documents at the Pentagon. And since IBM refused to release printouts >>of earlier games, it was impossible to prepare for the match. I couldn’t feel >>badly about losing because I wasn’t playing on a level playing field. > >Get the violins out, here is Kasparov sympathy song. Excuse me, while I dabble >my tears for him. IBM was so mean - they held a gun to his head to play the >match under these conditions or else he would be freed. > >If he didn't feel bad, why was he so upset. Why he is so upset to this day? > >He had sufficient leverage in 1996 to demand that Deep Blue play match against >the #2 man in the world first if that was major concern. If he was that concern >before the match about how level the playing field was, why did he sign on the >dotted line? The answer is obvious; he wanted the money. Either way, it again >points out the same question raised earlier, for somebody who can so far ahead >in a chess game, why can't he see 2 or 3 moves ahead in the game of life? > > > >> >> What, if anything, did we learn from your contests with Deep Blue? >> >>We learned, of course, that we are very slow compared with the machine, like >>ants compared with a jet. But it’s not just speed. Playing against a chess >>computer means facing something that doesn’t have any nerves; it’s like sitting >>across the table from an IRS agent during a tax audit. > >Steve B - we can related to this analogy! Excellent - there is nothing worse >than the IRS in the US. The IRS in the US is the only agency that sieze your >property BEFORE you are found guilty. (Well now, I guess the DEA can also do >that if you are involved a drug deal.) It seems like Kapparov is writing from >first hand experience here. > > >>Chess between humans and >>computers is very different from chess between only humans. For one thing, human >>players have to cope with a lot of external pressures and distractions: you have >>a family, you write books, you give lectures, you get headaches, you have to >>earn money. > >HELLO! Welcome to the club Kasparov - they call this the real world and we all >have those issues everyday when we go to work. > >>There’s a lot of stuff filling up your brain while you’re playing. A >>machine, on the other hand, is completely without distractions. This shows the >>weakness, the shortcomings of the mortal mind, which is a daunting lesson for >>human beings. We just can’t play with the same consistency as a computer. So >>it’s all the more fortunate that we have our intuition to help us play better. > > >Bottom line - Kaspy is whinning just as much in 2005 as he did in 1997. Nothing >has really changed for him at all regarding the match. > >Just my $.02 (okay maybe a nickel's worth) -- feel free to disagree. > >Best, > >Michael iron logic, Mike regards, Geno
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