Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Computer wins chess game

BONN, Germany: World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik lost the sixth and decisive game against computer program Deep Fritz on Tuesday, ceding a hard-fought Man vs. Machine match 4-2.

Chess is one of those games that is capable of being played by a machine, if it is programmed properly, and has the power.
I remember back in the Eighties, a movie critic by the name of Joe Bob Briggs made an interesting conjecture; how well would a machine be able to play poker with some good players? His opinion was that the computer would lose, because poker, when played by experts, is as much a contest of character and personality as it is a game of statistics and logic. The machine may be able to figure the odds, but it would never be able to outfox a human who is playing against people, rather than against the cards, because they would change their patterns of play to confound a logical player, where a pro would be able to anticipate that kind of behavior from experience. I wonder if he may be right.
Any thoughts?

4 comments:

none said...

I used to play poker against a computer. It always assumed I was being logical and would fold most of the time if I placed a big bet.

Not sure if they are any smarter these days.

Abejarron Caotico said...

I don't have any experience with programming computers for something like playing a game, but I have limited experience with programming chatterbots. I think some of the same ideas may apply. A chatterbot can be programmed to carry on very basic conversations. It will respond to key words and phrases, and can prompt you to change the subject if you start saying things it can't find a match for. On the other hand, they can have very complex programming, and there's a contest every year where the goal is for the judges to not know if they've been chatting with a human or a machine.

What seperates the machine from a human, really, is that the conversation means nothing to it. If you say, "Purple is my favorite color," in response to, "Have you ever actually eaten roadkill?" the machine will switch tracks with you. Maybe, just maybe, it will ask you to stay on topic... it depends on the programming. However, the machine will not be confused and wonder why you'd come up with such a random reply. It does what it is programmed to do... it doesn't think, and it doesn't feel.

Human unpredictability may still give us an advantage, because even the most complex machine can't be programmed to handle everything.

GUYK said...

I figure that a good poker player will beat the machine..the machine can only figure the odds and never know when the player is bluffing. On POGO it is kinds like playing the machine..just have to watch how long it takes a player to bet and watch betting patterns as well as figure odds and catch cards. But it is still beatable..I am four and a half million tokens ahead right now..if it was real money..wow

The Conservative UAW Guy said...

"Any thoughts?"

You will be assimilated...