A computer scientist and AI researcher named Jean-Mar Alliot has developed a system that ranks top players based on how they execute their moves. He compared the moves of World Chess Champions with the moves of a supercomputer program called Stockfish. The program was able to make moves almost as perfect as a human. So what exactly does this mean for the future of chess?
Until the past 22 years, the world of chess has been dominated by computers. The development of AI hasn’t killed the game – it has only made top-level performance more accessible. This has been a game changer because, until recently, only the rich and famous could afford top-tier training. Thanks to AI, the playing field has leveled. It has made the game more interesting for human players and improved the game’s logic.
AlphaZero is one of the best-performing AIs and has been training since 2007. It mastered the game in just four hours after it was trained by a human coach. It is capable of defeating the world’s best players. Its superiority is based on its ability to learn on its own. When Artificial Intelligence evaluates Chess Champions?, it will become the best player in the world.
AlphaZero developed a program that analyzed chess moves and offered alternative moves to Grandmasters. In November of last year, it evaluated the moves of Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian champion, and Fabiano Caruana, an American champion. Both men had impressive ratings based on AlphaZero, which had an incredible ten million chess moves per second.
The first program to beat a human played on a computer was developed in 1947 by Claude Shannon. It ran on a MANIAC 1 tube computer. It had a 6×6 board instead of an 8×8 board. And the first game the computer played was against a woman who had trained for a week. The program also mastered the art of strategic planning. It beat the human, but did it in 15 minutes?
While there is much controversy surrounding the use of AI in chess, its impact on the sport is undeniable. With the help of artificial intelligence, chess has become a global entertainment powerhouse. With its widespread use, chess is now accessible to more people than ever before. Although the world of chess has changed dramatically since the first AI chess engine, it continues to evolve. And it continues to evolve, with many new competition elements inserted overtime.
In the early days of computer chess programs, they evaluated a player’s strategy by counting the number of legal bishop moves and the number of squares under control around the king. That method took nearly forty years to develop. Eventually, the algorithms improved enough to win a game against Lee Sedol, a Grandmaster. It’s not a surprise that AlphaGo is regarded as one of the greatest ever played.