Humans Can Still Outsmart Computers
When was the last time you won a game of chess against your computer? Unless you’re a chess grandmaster you probably have no chance. Even top rated grandmasters routinely lose to computers these days. But don’t give up so easily, you might still have a chance.
(PRWEB) March 3, 2005 -- When was the last time you won a game of chess
against your computer or even your PDA. Unless you’re a chess grandmaster you
probably have no chance. Even top rated grandmasters routinely lose to computers
these days. That’s because computer speeds have reached the point where most
humans can easily be out calculated in chess, checkers or just about any other
game that can be played on a chess board. But don’t give up so easily. A new
game called Arimaa turns the board upside down for computers. In a recent
challenge match, humans proved they can still outsmart a computer over a chess
board when the world's best Arimaa-playing program was defeated 7-1 by a
top-rated human player, Frank Heinemann.
The eight game series was
overseen by the International Computer Games Association (ICGA -- www.icga.org), which also oversees
the official Man vs. Machine chess matches. The match was co-sponsored by Hyland
Software (www.onbase.com), a
leading developer of document management software.
A $10,000 prize was
announced in November 2002 for any developer of a program that could defeat a
selected human player in an official Arimaa match before the year 2020. Although
more than 30 AI developers are working on such a program, so far only a few have
produced programs that play well enough to challenge a human. The best of these
was developed by David Fotland of Smart Games (www.smart-games.com).
Fotland is a veteran game programmer who has also developed a world-champion Go
program.
"Initially I thought I would be able to win the challenge, not
because Arimaa was easy, but because it was a new game, and the people playing
it were not strong yet," said Fotland. "For a while my program was as strong as
or stronger than any person, but the human players improved rapidly and
developed some new strategic concepts that were very difficult to capture in a
computer program."
A former NASA computer engineer with a Masters in
Artificial Intelligence, Omar Syed and his son Aamir created Arimaa after seeing
Garry Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue in 1997.
"We wanted to show that
humans are still capable of out-playing a computer using just a standard chess
set." commented Syed. "I think many people will be pleased to find a game where
they can actually beat the computer after a little practice. There aren't many
games left now where you can do that."
The $10,000 challenge still
stands; developers will have another chance to try for the prize next year.
"This is the second match since the announcement of the challenge and the second
time that the humans have so overwhelmingly won the match. These games shows
that even though computers can now perform billions of calculations per second,
they are still very far behind when it comes to making long-term strategic
decisions -- especially when there are a lot of creative options to choose
from," said Syed. "We have a long way to go in understanding this astonishing
human capability and replicating it in software."
Visitors to the www.arimaa.com site can view the
challenge match games. There is also an animated tutorial which shows how to
play the game as well as a gameroom where visitors can play against programs and
other players from around the world.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb214510.htm