[psychphysic]

Hot take, but chess is a zombie sport.

Software running in a smartphone can play deep games against each other.

Chess engines aren't like car engines are to sprinting. They are more akin to text-to-image AIs but as though every single picture they produce is better than what any artist ever could produce.

Part of that is because Chess is easily defined (the win conditions are comparatively simple).

I'm rambling now and I think that's enough wall of text for a hot take.

[xboxnolifes]

Machines can throw objects faster, further, and more accurate than humans, but field sports are still popular. It's interesting not because the object goes far, but because it's being done by a human.

[philwelch]

There isn't yet a humanoid robot that can autonomously play those sports, though.

[lelanthran]

> There isn't yet a humanoid robot that can autonomously play those sports, though.

Why does it have to be humanoid? The chess engine isn't.

[philwelch]

Chess is a game of symbol manipulation. It isn't played in the real world and its rules don't require human bodies the way field sports do.

[lelanthran]

> Chess is a game of symbol manipulation. It isn't played in the real world and its rules don't require human bodies the way field sports do.

I didn't mean "humanoid" as in "C3PO sitting across from the player at a table", I meant humanoid thought processes.

As far as I know, none of the chess engines are humanoid in the way they determine the next best move.

For one, they are all using far, far more instant-recall capacity than any human, ever.

> its rules don't require human bodies the way field sports do.

Which rule in football, tennis, american football, baseball, basketball or hockey requires humanoid players?

They may preclude robots as players, but that's a post-hoc fallacy - "they require all players to be humans, so therefore robots cannot replace humans like in Chess".

[philwelch]

> I didn't mean "humanoid" as in "C3PO sitting across from the player at a table", I meant humanoid thought processes. As far as I know, none of the chess engines are humanoid in the way they determine the next best move.

Sure, and if you had android basketball players or soccer players, they would probably play the game differently as well.

> Which rule in football, tennis, american football, baseball, basketball or hockey requires humanoid players?

The totality of the rules put together tend to require that. For instance, in the NFL, whether or not a player carrying the ball is considered "down" depends upon their elbow or knee touching the ground, which implies that they need to have elbows and knees. Whether or not a catch is considered in bounds depends upon both feet touching the ground in bounds, which implies that they need to have feet. And so forth. Soccer has specific rules about the hands, feet, and head, while basketball's rules around dribbling specify hands and footsteps.

Obviously you could build a robot that looked like a dalek with a pneumatic cannon and design the robot to shoot a ball, and that robot would probably be better than human players at shooting baskets or completing football passes, but it wouldn't actually be able to play the full game according to the same rules that apply to human players.

[viridian]

From what I've read on this exact topic w.r.t. robotics, there are a few select places you could probably replace humans with a robot using current technology, and achieve almost perfect results. Kickers in American football, free throws in basketball are two such examples.

[goatlover]

Kickers have to sometimes tackle, run fakes, kick onsides, deal with mishandled snaps or holds, and adjust for the conditions, like wind or how the opponent is trying to bother the kick. Plus the kick is from different parts of the field, unlike a free throw. But it doesn't matter, since someone taking a free throw has to be already in the game playing. There's no designated FT shooter.

[philwelch]

At some point, being able to score 3 points from unlimited range just breaks the game of football to the degree that an increased risk of mishandling a bad snap/hold doesn't really matter, and you won't ever need to kick onside, either.

[lupire]

You could just put a robot on a basketball team, take a pass from the tip off, and shoot a 3-pter. Like Air Bud

[viridian]

Ain't no rule says a robot can't play basketball.

[MichaelCollins]

I don't know, Voight-Kampff tests don't seem reliable.

[tluyben2]

I don’t really think you can compare those though; robots are crap and easily beaten at most physical sports. I mean, as far as I can find, there is not even a bipedal robot that outruns humans (there is the cheetah robot but it has 4 legs ; that’s like having a dog or, you know, cheetah compete against Usain).

But yes, people will continue to play chess, go and spear throwing because it doesn’t matter if something non human is better.

[lupire]

Why is bipedal required for running, but neuronal is not required for chess? These lines are arbitrary.

[varajelle]

Exactly. Also people still watch bicycle race while they stand no chance against a motorcycle. Or woman soccer despite man would win easily.

[tluyben2]

It’s not required, we just don’t allow anything else because it would no longer be interesting at all. That’s the point. Same why we don’t watch grandmasters play computers; they lose. But humans vs humans is still a good watch.

[dagw]

but field sports are still popular.

Are they? The throwing sports? How many people do you know who regularly follow shotputting or javelin (outside of possibly the olympics). How much do the top 20 javelin throwers in the world earn in sponsorship and prize money and how does that compare to other actually popular sports.

I have no doubt that chess will remain at least as popular as javelin or shot-put for the foreseable future. I'm just not sure that counts as 'popular'.

[xboxnolifes]

If they're popular enough to be in the Olympics, they're popular enough to be called popular.

[derac]

And yet the audience for chess engine tournaments is basically 0, while millions(?) watch human tournaments.

[mccorrinall]

Didn’t we just learn that Hans Niemann is apparently just a front-end for a chess engine? ;)

[icemelt8]

what if Hans is not human, but an advance AI cyborg? maybe he's not communicating with a chess engine, he IS the chess engine. Maybe his name is an anagram for the word Enigma or something.

[epolanski]

I like commented games between engines, this has more than a million views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wui0YweevtY

[asvitkine]

This has 100k views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nmCHW73-ec

[andrepd]

Chess engines have outclassed humans for about 15 years now. Yet chess is more popular than ever.

Why would chess engines playing very well mean human chess stops being interesting? I don't see the relation.

[HideousKojima]

In a similar vein, Tool Assisted Speedruns for video games can always outperform human players, but TAS streams and youtube videos don't get nearly as many viewers as real humans running. And human speedrunners caught cheating and using tools etc. have drastic hits to their popularity after they're exposed.

[tialaramex]

I'm actually on the whole more interested in a TAS. I would often watch a big fraction of the TAS block at a GDQ, and only RTA for niche cases where I especially care about that game.

However, TAS is very unlikely Computer Chess because the TAS is actually a composite of a vast number of individual human player inputs - assembled by in effecting rewinding and continuing the game over and over. The TAS is not a machine beating the game, but the effect if humans played the game as well as they know how. That's why they have "sync" problems during a GDQ, the playback device has no idea how to play, it's just robotically carrying out actions.

[Dylan16807]

A human making a TAS isn't playing the same game. They're playing a version with slow motion, rewind, memory inspection, etc.

And a computer performing a TAS isn't playing the game at all.

So many cheating scandals boil down to splicing, which is again not playing the same game.

Tools that don't hack the game are very often allowed and openly used.

[asimpletune]

Yeah I know what you mean but human chess is much more exciting because you can see themes appear in a player's strategy. You can sort of follow what they're thinking. Computer chess is next level precisely because the computer has decided that is the best move, but it's not part of some kind of narrative, it's just based on the engine's analysis.

[rowanG077]

Isn't that way more beautiful? Pure brilliance and perfection. There is no emotion in the machine making dumb mistakes. There is no fear in the machine questioning his move. Is there some kind of video of a GM analyzing an engines moves step by step? Can they even understand every move without seeing the whole picture?

[asimpletune]

Yeah, in a way it's more beautiful I think, but only in some abstract sense because it's still above everyone's heads. What's missing to make it interesting to watch is that narrative I was talking about, and that's a distinctly human feature of gameplay. I don't know if there's a video of GM's analyzing engine's moves, mostly because I think that's literally what the engine is for. And I don't think they can understand every move, which just goes to show how strong engines are. It's like alien tech strong.

[lairv]

> Chess engines aren't like car engines are to sprinting.

I think this is questionable. While we can understand the physical limitations of a human compared to an engine, we tend to alleviate the intellectual limitations. Just like an engine can deliver far more power than a human could ever do regardless of their training, a computer performs far more chess move computations than a human ever could, regardless of their training. It's just that our brain is biased toward alleviating computational cost, because we implicitly think "in the end, a human could as well play the same moves as a computer"

I do agree however on the premise that chess is a zombie sport, but I think it has more to do with the ease of cheating. If you consider cycling for example, there has also been cases of cheating with an electric engine inside the bike, and new cheating methods are likely to be developed faster detection procedures. And in this case "Bike engines are like car engines are to sprinting"

[whateveracct]

Seriously - go play a fighting game.

In fighting games, most AIs are discredited and stupid because they have no reaction time. I don't know of any that name in a nondeterministic 10-15f of reaction time. It really complicated things.

[short_sells_poo]

That's fairly counterintuitive to me. The easiest avenue for an AI to gain advantage over a human is reaction time and accuracy. E.g. an AI that reacts in microseconds will never be beaten on pure reaction by a human given that there's a floor of some 50-100msec for a human to be physically able to react to stimulus.

E.g. I remember early 3rd party Starcraft AIs would beat humans just by micromanaging certain nimble flying units.

[whateveracct]

I typo'd a bit so maybe it didn't get across. I meant an AI with human reaction time.

[Loocid]

>Chess engines aren't like car engines are to sprinting.

Why? That seems like a completely arbitrary line to draw.