Comment by azakai
18 days ago
> AlphaGo or AlphaZero didn’t need to model human cognition. It needed to see the current state and calculate the optimal path better than any human could.
I don't think this is right: To calculate the optimal path, you do need to model human cognition.
At least, in the sense that finding the best path requires figuring out human concepts like "is the king vulnerable", "material value", "rook activity", etc. We have actual evidence of AlphaZero calculating those things in a way that is at least somewhat like humans do:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09259
So even chess has "hidden state" in a significant sense: you can't play well without calculating those values, which are far from the surface.
I'm not sure there's a clear line between chess and poker like the author assumes.
(author here) great paper to cite.
What i think you are referring to is hidden state as in internal representations. I refer to hidden state in game theoretic terms like a private information only one party has. I think we both agree alphazero has hidden states in first sense.
Concepts like king safety are objectively useful for winning at chess so alphazero developed it too, no wonder about that. Great example of convergence. However, alphazero did not need to know what i am thinking or how i play to beat me. In poker, you must model a player's private cards and beliefs.
I see now, thanks. Yes, in poker you need more of a mental model of the other side.