Comment by Scarblac
7 years ago
> Also, in the chess community, Stockfish is not seen as AI, but Leela and A0 are.
That's a strange statement. For one, because chess players are hardly judges of what is and what isn't AI.
Among chess programmers there may be such an opinion here and there, but originally chess was a classical AI topic and alpha/beta search a classical AI algorithm. As are neural networks and Monte Carlo tree search. So it's quite a strange opinion, IMO.
The classic definition of AI is a machine doing something that seems like it should require human intelligence. Of course once it becomes commonplace for a computer to do something, it no longer seems like it should require human intelligence, so an equivalent definition is that what works consistently is just programming and what seems like it should work but doesn't yet is AI. Successful AI exists in the lag between getting something to work for the first time and it being accepted as something that computers routinely do.
roughly - "AI is what we call it when we don't really understand how it works, yet."
I think we need to be ready to accept that some things we may never completely understand because they're too complex. The human brain may be one of those things, and AI may be another.
For one, because chess players are hardly judges of what is and what isn't AI.
On the other hand, they happen to be great judges of human- vs engine- style of play. If you ask any of the top players who have spent time reviewing games by chess engines, I think you'll find a consensus around the belief that Alpha Zero and LCZero play far more human-like moves than do engines like Stockfish.
The traditional engine tends to be extremely conservative and materialistic, only playing a sacrifice when it has calculated a line which recovers the material with interest (or forces checkmate). The so-called AIs don't do this. You're far more likely to see them sacrifice material for a long-term positional advantage, like a great human player would.
From my experience looking at Alpha Zero and LCZero wins against Stockfish, one of the more common patterns I see is a sacrifice by the AI which gives such a dominant position that one or more of Stockfish's pieces become uselessly trapped behind their own pawns. It's this sort of position which seems perfectly tailored to exploit Stockfish's materialistic nature.
The term AI is not very clearly defined so different people use it in different ways.