Comment by ars
17 hours ago
Similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess
The Wikipedia doesn't have much info on the results, but from other reading I got the impression that the combination produced results stronger than any individual human or computer player.
My understanding is that they did, but don't any more; it's no longer true that humans understand enough things about chess better than computers for the human/computer collaboration to contribute anything over just using the computer.
I don't think the interval between "computers are almost as strong as humans" and "computers are so much stronger than humans that there's no way for even the strongest humans to contribute anything that improves the computer's play" was very long. We'll see whether mathematics is any different...
> My understanding is that they did, but don't any more; it's no longer true that humans understand enough things about chess better than computers for the human/computer collaboration to contribute anything over just using the computer.
This is not true, at least not in very long time formats like correspondence chess: https://en.chessbase.com/post/correspondence-chess-and-corre...
There's also many well known cases where even very strong engines miscalculate and can be beaten (especially in fast time controls or closed positions): https://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/hikaru-nakamura-crush...
The horizon effect is still very real in engines, although it's getting harder and harder to exploit.
Your Nakamura example is from 2008. That's 17 years ago. The machines have improved a lot since then, hardware and software both. I've seen Nakamura beat strong-but-still-limited bots playing "anti-computer chess" but I am fairly sure he would be eaten alive if he tried it against present-day Stockfish or Leela on good hardware.
Maybe you're right about correspondence chess. That interview is from 2018 and the machines have got distinctly stronger in that time, but 7 years isn't so long and it could be that human input still has some value for CC.
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