{"id":24187,"date":"2023-02-14T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-02-14T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=136604"},"modified":"2023-02-14T09:35:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-14T08:35:35","slug":"ai-has-dominated-chess-for-25-years-but-now-it-wants-to-lose","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/ai-has-dominated-chess-for-25-years-but-now-it-wants-to-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"AI has dominated chess for 25 years, but now it wants to lose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maia Chess is a project looking to make AI more human-like in its actions, competing on a more level playing field. <\/p>

By Alex Hughes\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 14 February 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Way back in 1985, a team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a computer purely to play games of chess. After moving to IBM, the computer was further developed, culminating in the obvious test \u2013 a match against then-world champion Garry Kasparov.<\/p>\n

However, the computer known as Deep Blue at this point wasn\u2019t enough for Kasparov; it lost four games to two. But like any good underdog, the computer was down but not out. It came back a year later to beat Kasparov in a narrow victory, winning by a single game.<\/p>\n

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Garry Kasparov playing his match against Deep Blue \u00a9 STAN HONDA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Since this monumental moment, artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) has had an iron grip on chess, and even Go \u2013 one of the oldest games in history. As artificial intelligence improves, it continues to outperform human ability, even at the highest level of chess, beating even those players unbeatable by humans.<\/p>\n

But as companies pour money into making AI the greatest chess player it can be, one company is taking a different route, making a chess-playing AI that is as bad as us mere mortals.<\/p>\n

Maia Chess<\/a> is a project created by a team of researchers from the University of Toronto, Cornell University and Microsoft Research back in 2020. They aim to make an AI that \u2018plays the human move \u2013 not necessarily the best move\u2019.<\/p>\n

As a result, this would be an AI that is more human-like in its decisions. It can make human mistakes, won\u2019t constantly be accessing the millions of possible outcomes, and overall, won\u2019t be quite so daunting to play against.<\/p>\n

The model learns from online human games instead of from self-play. It has been trained on millions of games, attempting to predict what the human move would be in every position.<\/p>\n

However, teaching a model on millions of games, all at vastly different levels would create a human-like AI with a somewhat confused psyche on how to play chess.<\/p>\n

To avoid this, the team found the best performance when personalising Maia to certain levels. The team trained nine versions of Maia, one for each of the Elo milestones (professional chess rankings) between 1100 and 1900.<\/p>\n

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Each of these versions learned from 12 million human games, understanding how to play like a human would at that level. By measuring how often Maia\u2019s predicted move was the same as a human, they can accurately understand the kind of mistakes humans make at each level, and at what point humans stop making these mistakes.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just a model that can play like a human would, it is also an insight into the way that humans play chess. Maia can accurately predict upcoming mistakes and understand why a player is losing their games.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the point? Why would we want an AI that plays like us? The team behind Maia hopes that this can be used as a tool for teaching. By understanding the common mistakes of players at your level, and being able to predict your mistakes, Maia could be used to give feedback and aid your ability.<\/p>\n

However, this wouldn\u2019t be the first time AI had been utilised as a teacher and the results aren\u2019t always perfect. \u201cAI has been used for the purposes of education for many years with mixed results. It\u2019s always been difficult to measure exactly how effective an AI is at educating a person,\u201d says Prof Peter Bentley<\/a>, a computer scientist and author based at University College London.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany AI researchers get a little distracted by their usual measures of \u2018accuracy\u2019 or \u2018prediction\u2019 by the AI and do not properly assess the benefits (if any) to the student. However, with the advent of Large Language Models (ChatGPT<\/a>, for example) there\u2019s huge excitement about the potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question is less about whether Maia can improve your chess ability, but more about whether it can actually be an effective teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always going to be hard to beat a human teacher, who can work with us, judge our moods, our abilities, our likes and dislikes, and be motivating and inspiring such that we love to learn with them,\u201d says Bentley.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill an AI ever be that inspirational teacher you remember from school? I\u2019m not sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maia has also been set up to allow players to have games against an AI that is more realistic of the human games that they will have. In the future, this technology could be used to predict the moves of an individual player, learning their weaknesses and common mistakes.<\/p>\n

Of course, not everyone is looking to improve their chess game, but this style of AI could be adapted. Instead of using AI as a method of beating humans or doing their menial tasks for them, Maia Chess shows how AI can be used as a teacher.<\/p>\n

Want to try your hand against Maia? You can play against it at any level between 1100 and 1900 for free. Simply open Maia\u2019s Lichess page<\/a> and click the two crossed-over swords in the top right-hand side.<\/p>\n

About our expert, Peter Bentley<\/h4>\n

Peter is a computer scientist and author who is based at University College London. He is the author of books including 10 Short Lessons in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics<\/em> and Digital Biology<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n