Games

The Turk

The Turk

• Built by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734 – 1804).

The Turk

• Constructed and unveiled in 1770 to impress the Austro-Hungarian Empress Marie-Theresa.

• Toured Europe and America for 85 years.

• Destroyed by fire in 1852.

• The secret unveiled in 1857 (some question about this).

How It Might Have Been Presented

Victorian Cut-Out Theatre #6: A Singularity of Mind

Watching It Play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdT4yG8wczQ&feature=related

How Did It Work?

The Turk

How it worked:

Exploited:

• Levers

• Magnets

• A candle

The Turk

Still fascinates people.

A Modern Reconstruction

Built by John Gaughan. First displayed in 1989. Controlled by a computer. Uses the Turk’s original chess board.

Recall: How Hard Is Chess?

The 20 legal initial moves

Searching for the Best Move

A

B C D

E F G H I J K L M (8) (-6) (0) (0) (2) (5) (-4) (10) (5)

How Much Computation Does it Take?

• Middle game branching factor: about 35.

• Typical game may be about 80 ply (one move for each player)

• 3580 310123

• Number of seconds since Big Bang: 31017

How Much Computation Does it Take?

• Middle game branching factor: about 35

• Lookahead required to play master level chess: about 8

• 358 21012

• Number of seconds since Big Bang: 31017

• Number of sequential games since Big Bang: 150,000

So Could Turk Have Been Real?

http://www.clockwork-comics.com/2011/03/01/lost_at_sea/

Moxon’s Master

'Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm.'

http://www.sff.net/people/doylemacdonald/l_moxon.htm

Edgar Alan Poe

A replica is reburied in 2009.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Weekend/edgar-allan-poe-proper-burial-160-years/story?id=8799941

“MAELZEL'S CHESS-PLAYER”

Southern Literary Magazine, 1836

http://www.eapoe.org/works/ESSAYS/MAELZEL.HTM

From Poe’s Article

But it is needless to dwell upon this point.

It is quite certain that the operations of the Automaton are regulated by mind, and by nothing else.

Indeed this matter is susceptible of a mathematical demonstration, a priori.

The only question then is of the manner in which human agency is brought to bear.

From Poe’s Article

The Automaton does not invariably win the game.

Were the machine a pure machine this would not be the case — it would always win. The principle being discovered by which a machine can be made to play a game of chess, an extension of the same principle would enable it to win a game — a farther extension would enable it to win all games — that is, to beat any possible game of an antagonist.

A little consideration will convince any one that the difficulty of making a machine beat all games, is not in the least degree greater, as regards the principle of the operations necessary, than that of making it beat a single game.

Games as an Early Target of AI

• 1950 Claude Shannon published a paper describing how a computer could play chess

• 1952-1962 Art Samuel built the first checkers program

• 1957 Newell and Simon predicted that a computer will beat a human at chess within 10 years (unless barred)

• 1967 MacHack was good enough to achieve a class-C rating in tournament chess.

• 1994 Chinook became the world checkers champion

• 1997 Deep Blue beat Kasparpov

• 2007 Checkers is solved

• AI in Role Playing Games – now we need knowledge

Chess Machines Ken Thompson’s Belle computer searched about 180,000 positions per second (the super-computers at the time were doing 5000 positions) and could go 8 – 9 ply in tournament games, which enabled it to play in the master category. It won the world computer chess championship and all other computer tournaments from 1980 to 1983, until it was superseded by giant Cray X-MPs costing a thousand times more.

Chess Today

In 1997, Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov.

Does This Mean It’s Curtains for Humans?

Special purpose hardware.

Each chip is capable of processing two to three million positions per second. By using over 200 of these chips the overall speed of the program could be raised to 200 million (2108) positions per second.

Does This Mean It’s Curtains for Humans?

Special purpose hardware.

How much do you need to know to play chess?

Each chip is capable of processing two to three million positions per second. By using over 200 of these chips the overall speed of the program could be raised to 200 million (2108) positions per second.

Chess Knowledge

• The rules generate nodes.

• A heuristic function evaluates them.

Man vs Machine

http://spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/computing/software/how-computer-chess-changed-programming/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=101111

REEM-A

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1212

You Can Play Anytime

http://www.caissa.com/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2007360/

A 2013 movie set in the 1980’s.

Set over the course of a weekend tournament for chess software programmers thirty-some years ago, Computer Chess transports viewers to a nostalgic moment when the contest between technology and the human spirit seemed a little more up for grabs.

Checkers

Samuel’s Program Learned and Improved

Suppose we have evaluated A down 8 moves. We back up the score and remember it.

Now what happens if A shows up at a leaf node at some later time?

Checkers

About 500 billion billion moves later, checkers is solved:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5844/1518

51020 possible positions

Go

A standard board is:

• 19 x 19

• with 361 intersections

Go

An average of about 240 moves to consider.

A 20 ply search would look at 4 1047 positions.

(Recall: 3 1017 seconds since Big Bang.)

http://www.cosumi.net/en/

Go

Monte Carlo methods in MoGo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go#Monte-Carlo_methods

Monte Carlo Methods

A Monte Carlo Example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fCVxTTAtFQ Intro, then skip to 6:36

Does This Mean It’s Curtains for Humans?

Rubik’s Cube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcZw7VoD8FM&feature=player_embedded#!