Techmate: How AI rewrote the rules of chess
Does the human-like strategy of Google’s AlphaZero represent the dawn of flexible computers?
By Richard Waters
It sounds like a classic case of the unstoppable force coming up against the immovable object. Two world-beating computers, each programmed in a completely different way, take each other on at chess. A titanic tussle seems guaranteed. But what happens if one of the machines has also learned ju-jitsu?
Chess strategy has evolved considerably from the days of its first official champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, in 1886, to its latest, the Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. But throughout there has been a constant: the number and value of a players’ pieces — known as “material” — have been key. That war-of-attrition thinking has been underlined since computers, with their ability to churn through millions of options to find a chink in an opponent’s defences, took over from humans as the best chess players almost two decades ago.
But late last year in a battle masterminded from an airy new office block in London’s King’s Cross, a chess program with a highly unconventional view of the game turned the tables.
The breakthrough came 21 moves into one of the 100 games between the two machines: Stockfish 8, one…
