AI and Chess ♟

I have always enjoyed chess, right from when a Grand Master visited our primary school, through to realising my grandad is a bit of chess wizard 🧙🏼‍♂️ too, even still at 89 its very difficult to beat him! My grandad taught me to play and I would play regularly with him - we would always play 3 games and for many years I would always lose 3 games! He would tell me about computers 💻 and about playing “a game ahead”, by thinking about all the moves you possibly can - and how computers can do that faster than us. He also used it to show me patience, critical thinking and the consequences of your actions.

However, reading a section in Yuval Noah Harari’s book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century I came across some fascinating content about how far AI have come in the chess world. I am peripherally aware of developments in AI and machine learning via reading interest in FinTech and InsurTech, however, the way Yuval explains this really brought to life the step changes in this specific area.

The author focuses on games of chess between two AI’s; the Stockfish 8 program which was then the worlds computer chess champion for 2016 and AlphaZero, Googles chess program.

They played 100 games and AlphaZero won 28 games and tied the remaining 72 - it didn’t even lose once.

The reason this interested me is because Stockfish 8 has had decades of computer experience, access to centuries of accumulated human experience in chess data and was able to calculate 70 million chess positions per second. I mean how can you compete with that?

AlphaZero did. After 4 hours. And no access to human experience of chess or decades of computing experience and only performing in the region of 80,000 calculations per second. AlphaZero instead used the then latest machine learning principles and played against itself!

“Since AlphaZero learned nothing from any human, many of its winning moves and strategies seemed unconventional to human eyes.” Direct quote from the author.

I am now on a path of reading a lot more into AI advancement. The author’s book talks about the impact and effects of technology in general and its definitely made me more aware of where things really are as opposed to where I thought they were and of course, what the potential and even likely consequences are…

Source: Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

#chess #AI #artificialintelligence #machinelearning #strategy #development #patience