Sunday 10 May 2015

Chess and War, AI and Human Extinction

While I'm not interested in a war or a warfare, a chess program is not a topic that's easy to come by.

According to BBC News' article "Has chess got anything to do with war?" (2015), although chess was once seen as a miniature of war and a chess program was once seen as the key to the victory, chess is now perceived as just "the touchstone of the intellect," in which smart people are expected to be good at it. The reason that war is not a chess game is an unrealistic assumption of "perfect information" — everything in the war are known.

Enumerating of Chessboard Dispositions
Enumerating of Chessboard Dispositions.
By the way, a chess program might look smarter than you but it's actually not. Simply speaking, it's just good at enumerating and remembering the boards. At any turn of a chess game, it tries to write down all possible moves and their corresponding board dispositions. For each disposition, it continues to do the same thing — write all possible moves and their corresponding dispositions. This goes on until it finds that it can win the game by playing those listed moves. There might be not enough memory to jot down all board dispositions, but the program will assess which one is the most promising board and will play the listed moves.

Though we're slower than the program, it is something human can do. A chess program, which is a form of artificial intelligence that some people are afraid of, is just an enumerating-and-remembering program. Scientists are still far from the "artificial intelligence" which is frequently appeared in blockbuster films, capable of logical reasoning and creative thinking to hurt humans. The fear of "artificial intelligence" amongst some people is therefore nonsense.

Although chess has got nothing to do with war, has artificial intelligence got anything to do with human extinction?
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Reference
Has chess got anything to do with war? (2015, May 3). BBC News Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32542306.
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8 comments:

  1. Peter AUA10 May 2015 at 06:34

    Tin's latest post seems to me to raise lots of interesting questions. I'm interested in machine AI for several reasons, from philosophical questions such as what it is to be a human being, or more importantly a person, which has implications for issues such as abortion, which I commented on earlier ("The Newborn of UK Princess"), to the future of humans on Earth.

    As I read Tin's post, I was reminded of recent news reports that such different figures as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, all brilliant in the area of science-technology, have warned that the rise of truly smart machines, machines with real intelligence, pose serious threats to human existence.

    But then, as Tin's post also prompts us to think, what is intelligence? Is it something that a machines could have? I think the answer to the last question must be "Yes" because there is a well known example of a machine with human-like intelligence all around us: human beings.

    But my chess playing is so bad that, unless they're set to a low level, I can't even beat the simple programs that run on my phone.

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  2. Unknown10 May 2015 at 16:03

    I love playing chess. I've been in the chess club for 9years, but I've stopped playing it since I entered the university, because there is no one there to play against me. So I downloaded a chess application to play it was fun at first, I have a chance to play with a challenging intelligence A.I. and yet I still can't feel the thrill of accomplishment after I won. Now I don't remember much about how to play it on competitive level and time makes it more rusty day after day, but still I remember my tactic that works around the castling strategy.

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    1. Unknown10 May 2015 at 16:11

      Well,I forgot to say I do think that AI might be one of the possible reason that involves with human extinction, but still as long as people don't put a gun or a power in there hand I think it would be fine...I guess?

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  3. Unknown10 May 2015 at 16:54

    I am not interested in chess very much. If you want to good at this board game, you should improve managing, foresight and concentrating skill and I am not good at it. However, I decide to study Computer programming so I am interested in AI instead. In the past, there are many movie about human extinction by robot or AI such as terminator. It is very challenging thing, if someone can invent some AI like that. But it is not good, if This AI want to kill is and destroy human being.

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    1. Unknown10 May 2015 at 16:55

      *But it is not good, if This AI want to kill us and destroy human being.

      Delete
    2. Unknown10 May 2015 at 18:11

      I'm not good at playing chess much and also another games neither. However, it's certainly not good that if AI want to kill human but it has many limitations which the robot can't do, so it might be fine to invent.

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  4. Anonymous10 May 2015 at 19:58

    I am not interested in playing chess much because I think this is a game for smart person, and I'm not. However,I liked playing Chinese chess when I was young. Its rule does not same with normal chess but I cannot remember at all.

    For the human extinction topic, I think AI may be one of reason of human war in the future because It also depend on human who use or order it. And this may lead to extinction, I guess. However, the good always comes the bad, AI bring a lot of benefit to human being as well.

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  5. Peter AUA11 May 2015 at 07:07

    Also in the BBC News recently, although I've only just come across it, is "A question of computers and artificial intelligence." (P. Day. 2015, May 6. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32588706), which I hadn't seen until just now as I was browsing more or less at random while enjoying my morning coffee.

    As Tin's post and the responses show, there is considerable interest in intelligence of the artificial variety (varieties?).

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