AI and Chess

Interesting lecture on AI and Chess.

With AlphaZero, it is clear that the DeepMind team did more than just build a better machine. They truly built a different machine, and we are only at the beginning stages of seeing what these new machines can do. To take just one example, in late 2018, the DeepMind team applied the AlphaZero technology in a scientific competition that predicts protein structures and it significantly outperformed all the other scientific teams from around the world.

We should not lose sight of the fact that these are still machines, however. AlphaZero does not and never will have conscious awareness any more than your smartphone, your PC, or your toaster does. What it does have is very sophisticated algorithms with tremendous capabilities. AI is technology with amazing potential that is still in its infancy. In a way, even though computers have now penetrated nearly every facet of our lives, we are still at a similar moment as when Claude Shannon wrote his 1949 paper!

Will chess continue to “act as a wedge in attacking other problems of a similar nature and of greater significance,” as Shannon wrote? Maybe. But it is also possible that 70 years after Shannon wrote those words, chess may have outlived its special role in computer science. What we do know for sure is that computers have already developed to the point where they can greatly enrich our enjoyment and appreciation of the ancient game of chess. And computers will almost surely continue to develop by leaps and bounds.

Wolff, Patrick. Learn to Play Chess Like a Boss

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