CHESS MASTER VS AI

Brayton Lee
3 min readApr 4, 2023

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I find the AIs that were able to beat the best chess players in the world really interesting. I would have assumed that an AI playing chess would be good because of memorization and following the rules. I thought a chess player, who foreshadows three or four moves in advance would still be able to win. It’s really interesting to me that you can program a machine to beat some of the best chess players in the world who have been playing a game their whole life. On top of that chess isn’t a fairly new game and it’s really well-studied so to be able to accomplish what AI did twenty years ago by beating top chess players, is really interesting.

Technologies have sped everything up in our lives from how fast we get packages to how we gather information. Some of these developments have led to negative impacts on our society. They have enabled us in a few ways and by impacting patience and thoughtfulness. There are many things that we don’t have to think about now. We don’t have to worry about how to get places because we have our GPS on our phones. This has led to us not having to think and losing a skill, which is a sense of direction. I can see the difference between me and my father. I grew up plugging directions in my phone and my father didn’t and as a result, our knowledge of directions is much different. This probably isn’t that big of a deal when it comes to directions, but maybe it’s hurting us more than we know. On the other hand, I think it has allowed becoming less stressed out about simpler tasks. We don't have to worry about figuring everything out, because technology is always there to help and we can relax a little bit.

“In the article What is Artificial Intelligence? How does AI Work?”, they bring up many benefits that AI offers to society. They mention safer banking and better medicine. With AI impacting these two areas, we can see a path to applying AI for social good. In the article, it states “The application of AI in banking could lead to upwards of $400 billion in savings.” This is so much money that would be saved by AI. This money could improve our economy as a whole. AI in healthcare has the ability to do a lot of good. AI has the ability to analyze large amounts of data and provide diagnostics. For example, in an article about AI in healthcare, they stated, “Digital health startup Thymia is a prime example. Founded in 2020, Thymia developed an AI-based video game that is meant to provide faster, more accurate, and objective mental health assessments. Patients on the platform are evaluated based on the video games they enjoy, after which a baseline assessment is created. Then, AI looks at thousands of anonymized facial features on video and studies audio to identify the likelihood and potential severity of depression. The platform offers continuous, remote monitoring for patients and clinicians to understand the conditions and treatments in real-time.” This company shows the efficiency and power that AI can work at and as a result bring good to healthcare.

The connection that Chase makes between AI being able to beat chess and possibly extending to strategic moves in the military is a really good thought. From what I read AI is a little behind when it comes to strategy, it’s really good at making logical moves and memorizing rules. If you could program them to understand military principles I’m sure it could become a great resource in the military.

https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence

https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/artificial-intelligence-healthcare/#:~:text=Examples%20of%20AI%20in%20Medicine,vast%20amount%20of%20data%20sets.

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