Computers Beating Humans at Advanced Chess
businessinsider.com
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To take this from chess is rather silly.
Chess is a discrete game on 64 squares with a handful of possibilities in a given position, and a result of three different outcomes. It's right next to long division in the spectrum of problems that are amenable to computer analysis.
If anything, the surprise isn't that humans have been surpassed by computers in calculating chess positions, it's that humans are as good as we are at such a discrete and mechanical game of perfect information and logic.
Further the techniques to improve computer chess programs are brilliant, but they aren't techniques that lend themselves to domains of intelligence beyond chess.
I beg to differ. MiniMax for instance is a technique that has wide application outside of chess, as do alpha/beta pruning and other optimization strategies.
Chess as a game has advanced computer science considerably. Did you know that the first computer program was a chess program? It was played by having rooms full of people work through the code in order to compute the next move.
For the most part, programmers program better than programs. It's amazing to think about the possibilities as this statement becomes less true.
But can a computer write code from scratch as good as a human? No(t yet).
That part of your sentence is wrong, the rest (minds are nothing more than computers running on substrate) is wrong or meaningless, too. It just so happens that computation of the Turing model is one of the things human minds do, and badly. It's very much not the only thing. (Unless you mean computer in a sufficiently vague and abstract way as for the statement to be vacuous.)
The biological method of information processing, calcium ion transfer, is demonstrably orders of magnitude slower than artificially devised methods by semiconductors. So this is physically not optimal and easily proved. So that part of my sentence is correct.
The rest of your comment is too ill-defined to refute, unless you hold that there is some non-material, extra-physical quantity of mental process that cannot be duplicated by engineering.
The optimization is a subtle one but extremely powerful, and it will be a while before we can pack equivalent computational power in something of similar size and power requirements.
Think about the amount of hardware required to simulate a cat brain at reduced speed, then think about the amount of hardware in a cat brain.
I think it will happen eventually, but given the long record of failed predictions in this area, I think that a blanket statement that it's going to be a "short matter of time" is unwarranted.
Or the engine could make use of techniques such as genetic algorithms to improve itself. Meaning its abilities wouldn't necessarily relate to its creator.
The program has been taught and empowered to make decisions the person can't make. It's no more a snapshot of the person than a child is a snapshot of its parents.
"Computer chess expert Kenneth W. Regan has compiled extensive data on this question, and you will see that a striking percentage of the best or most accurate chess games of all time have been played by man-machine pairs."
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/FreestyleSt...
How would anyone know? The OP is just linking to the same 2012 thread filled with speculation which you see pop up every so often. There's nothing hard in it establishing that centaurs are still useful/no longer useful, and in any case, 3 years is a long time.
> http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~regan/chess/fidelity/FreestyleSt....
Which will be a lagging indicator (if computer chess AIs had just squeaked over the threshold where a grandmaster's contribution declined to the level of noise, how many years would it take for unaided chess programs to accumulate 'a striking percentage') and in any case, has just a few games post-2010 and none at all post-2013.
I do think there is a down side for games being solved with computers. Mostly because games become highly calculated and right moves become computer moves.
Take a look at Paul Morphy's games. They are elegant and exciting to watch and analyze. I just don't see the same play happening today with human or computer players. Murphy would lose today but his games were beautiful, maybe even "incorrect" by today's standards.
Games and many other human activities are social activities.Only analysing them the way you would analyse a stone falling on the ground is just silly. you're missing a big chunk of the reasons the phenomenon is taking place in the first place.
It is all driven from a simpler and more fundamental notion, that sometimes people who work on computers all day can begin to believe humans and computers are identical; a human that doesn't consistently optimize its actions with respect to certain metrics is just buggy/poorly executed software, hence, the poor deserve to be poor, action without potential utility gain/profit is wasted and valueless, etc.
Enjoying playing chess.
The only problem I see with this line of thought is that if we keep following it, we get into the absurd. "Why even play chess?", "Why even bother doing anything a computer is better at doing?", "What to do then?". And, this is my personal answer: do things because you enjoy them.
I don't know if we will ever reach a point where a computer can decide if it wants to play chess, but I hope that if we do, then the computer chooses to play on the basis that it wants to play and not on the fact that it has to optimize some external parameter. (Although as I write this, I realize that "do things because you enjoy them" practically means maximizing your utility function.)
Ok, you win. Haha. I just stopped enjoying analyzing this issue. :)