[breck]

A few weeks back I was at a program synthesis conference and gave a short lightning talk where I said deep learning so far has been used to solve the easy computer chess, and the easy computer go, etc...not to take away from those accomplishments at all, I was just saying that having a robot beat grandmasters at real world physics chess where you have to move the pieces with many degrees of freedom is a harder problem, but trivial for a 7 year old.

I thought we were still a decade away from having machines beat humans at real chess and real go, but this makes me think maybes it’s just 5 years out. Very impressive.

[PeterisP]

Manipulating chess pieces is trivial for e.g. a pick and place robot, which are quite widely used for industrial activities that are quite close to moving chess or go pieces.

In particular, far from being "just 5 years out", robot hands that execute chess moves have been already demoed many times, including by hobbyists with very limited resources. Reliable computer vision was a bit more trickier a decade ago, but that's not a problem now; Having a robot beat grandmasters at "real chess" (i.e. the same thing as "virtual chess" but also manipulating the physical pieces) would not be considered a hard problem nor a valuable achievement, it's a nifty parlor trick that could make a cute demo 10 years ago, and could be used as a homework project for engineering students nowadays - however that's likely to be two separate projects, as the mechanical manipulation and visual recognition is likely to be different skillsets and thus different students.

Here's a random article from 2010 https://newatlas.com/chess-terminator-robot-takes-on-kramnik...

Here's a hobbyist project from 2013 https://www.robotshop.com/community/blog/show/a-chess-playin...

Here's a tutorial from 2017 on how to make the chess piece manipulation yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NefiXZ7BCsE

Here's a student project, replacing the vision with sensors - https://www.instructables.com/id/Chess-Robot/

[breck]

Great links, thanks very much for bringing me up to speed on this domain. The Chess Terminator is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

> Manipulating chess pieces is trivial for e.g. a pick and place robot,

Perhaps in a sterile, well-known, controlled environment; but not in a real world, novel, potentially adversarial environment.

I guess my point is about AGI is that I would bet a 7-year old could currently beat the best AI in the world at real, physical chess, played in a randomly chosen park. Kids can quickly figure out strategies in the real world with its more degrees of freedom than you have in the digital world of computer chess. In other words, perhaps a kid may figure out that if they place a piece in a certain position, the computer is unable to "see" or "execute" the desired move, perhaps because the angle of the sun or some line of sight obstruction. While an adult might be generous and offer help, a lot of children will take advantage of the robot's weaknesses.

[PeterisP]

IMHO that's not chess anymore, as that explicitly violates the rules of the chess - if you manage to get an advantage by distracting your opponent and obscuring line of sight to the pieces, that's simply violating the laws of chess (specifically, FIDE "12.6 It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any manner whatsoever.") and appropriately punishable by the arbiters.

Chess is a well-defined, strict game not only from the "on-board" perspective but also regarding how the opponents can behave - e.g. it's explicitly specified that if your phone makes a sound during a match, then you lose the game; the rules of chess IMHO are exactly a sterile, well-known, controlled environment, and attempting to transform it to a novel, potentially adversial environment would generally be a violation of both the spirit and letter of laws of chess.

E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing is a fine physical, adversarial form of sports, but it's not chess.

[breck]

Haha, thank you! I stand corrected. (Next time I play with my nieces and nephews, I'm going to be stricter about rules :) )

[PeterisP]

Hah, I have a niece that will assert that I violate that "forbidden to annoy opponent" rule because I annoy her simply by existing.

[carapace]

Years ago I played chess with/on a machine that used a magnet under the board and metal bases on each piece.

The pieces seemed to move by themselves.