Lecture � James Luke � Deep Blue, Deep Computing

Greg Detre

@ 16.15 on Tuesday, 06 March, 2001

IBM Hursley

 

started off as Navy weapons engineering, then Grand Prix, then Star Wars (AI discrimination architecture), then IBM assimilated Data Sciences

chess - deep computational problem, applicable elsewhere (e.g. Blue Gene, protein folding)

it�s like when they set up two labs in Beijing and India on natural language

 

major web event - 4 million viewers in 1997

Kasparov vs Deep Blue � solved the Turing test for chess, but did not come close to the problem of real intelligence � didn�t even try

Kasparov � can remember move in every game, play 30 people blindfolded, see 14 moves ahead

Murray Campbell � Master level chess player, greatest compliment of his life was when Kasparov accused him of forcing one of Deep Blue�s moves

 

deep computing � shopping patterns, travel schedules, protein folding, fraud detection

 

3 approaches

improved algorithms

Kasparov is working at the meta-data level, meta-concepts, generating hypothesising and applying to test data � he can�t do brute force, like Deep Blue (they had more chips to add in the third game)

architectural

special-purpose hardware

 

games are good as the fruit fly of AI

well-defined rules + goals

easy to measure progress

large pool of experts

too complex to solve

looking for general methods for solving complex problems

 

deep thought 2 � massive parallelism + super-computing, specifically-designed architecture and software for that architecture

some Grandmasters claim that their style would be better suited at playing computers than Kasparov

every single move of Deep Blue�s is fresh � it doesn�t take history into account

 

Feb 1996 Kasparov won a 6-game match

what did they learn:

search was acceptable

chess knowledge was insufficient

needed better opening and endgame preparation

more flexibility during the match

they changed the weighting in the algorithms between but not during games

 

May 1997

Kasparov unveils anti-computer strategy - exploit his human long-range foresight

Deep Blue � half-way through, made a random move � software bug

Kasparov won the game

analysed the code, found the bug, decided that it was a random move

Kasparov concluded that the computer had worked its way all the way through the tree, and knowing it couldn�t win, made a random move

Kasparov then chose not to accept a draw in the second game and lost

 

40 moves in 2 hours � 30 supercomputer nodes, 500 processors = 200m posible positions, 2m/second

Deep Blue in Bedfont

alpha beta minimax algorithm

master node worker nodes chess accelerators (90% of the processing, 80% of the delegation by workers at software level???)

typically, Grandmaster easily looks 10 moves ahead � same with Deep Blue

each move takes an extra 5 times processing power

add quiescence � determines vulnerable areas with critical moves, and goes really deep with early critical moves � consistently 14 moves (move = move by white and a move by black)

 

extended book of 600,000 Grandmaster games

 

evaluation

complex feature detector on accelerator chip

8000 different features

each feature weight can be set individually � and is worked out and tweaked painstakingly with pen and paper with a Grandmaster player, rather than neural network or reinforcement learning

 

Deep Blue junior- 1 second of processing on 1 processor on 1 node � still beats most people

contempt rating � largely to do with whether it accepts/offers draws

 

Questions

What spinoffs are you considering???

Blue gene � pharmaceutical industry

meteorological work

atomic weapons research

Specialist processor that knew about the domain � is that done elsewhere???

yes, e.g. in telecommunications for price-demand models, meteorology

What made you stop at the number of processors???

probably cost and convenience rather than science

Could a Grandmaster tell that it was Deep Blue rather than a human playing � that would be the real chess Turing test???

doesn�t think that there�s anything unique to Deep Blue�s technique

The emphasis in Deep Blue was on architecture over algorithms???

suspects not � it�s the least risk approach

but it�s less interesting

seems as though processing power is creeping towards intelligence, but that would be disappointing

it comes back to intelligence vs the solving of a complex problem

Turing test as appropriate as asking a submarine whether it can swim

necessary but not sufficient??? � NO, sufficient but not necessary

Are you working on Go playing??? � branching

IBM aren�t dong anything more with chess

still use chess for algorithm research

not yet, but interested in Go

management think it�s probably not worth their while

Did you ever feel guilty about what you did to Kasparov???

What about the Turing test for speech???

What decisions did you take to keep it strictly chess???