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by CrazyStat 1591 days ago
> It's certainly true that having a human in the loop leads to worse outcomes in chess (unless the human has enough modesty to just not do anything).

No, this is actually totally false. There is a world championship in computer-aided correspondence chess [1], and you won't get anywhere near the top ranks by having "enough modesty to just not do anything."

[1] https://www.iccf.com/

1 comments

Does deep blue participate?

If not your assertion is false.

The best chess-playing program is Stockfish and it could give deep blue and any human a handicap and still win easily

The state of art is much better now than before

Deep blue is 25 years out of date and far far weaker than modern chess engines.
I think that strengthens the point, don't you? Deep blue could beat humans a long time ago, and it's still the case that computers don't need humans to play chess, and play it better than humans do.
> Deep blue could beat humans a long time ago

Yes

> and it's still the case that computers don't need humans to play chess,

Sure, I guess

> and play it better than humans do.

In the sense that they can beat humans in a 1v1, yes.

But none of that is relevant to the original claim, which is that a human in the loop makes a computer play worse--i.e., that human+computer is worse than computer alone. This claim is false, as the ICCF championship demonstrates each year.