[skulk]

what does actually playing chess have to do with writing an efficient game tree search algorithm beyond a few simple principles? You challenged him to a programming contest and won, as the vastly more experienced programmer. Even though he could use AI, your domain knowledge here proved to be the deciding factor.

[esikich]

I had never tried to make a chess bot before though, we both started at the same spot. There are obvious things you can search for to make one. We both had the same information there. The domain was chess, and his expertise didn't help him win. If you are a chef, shouldn't you be able to make better recipes with AI? If you are a fitness trainer, better routines? Etc? Or is AI only for programmers?

[skulk]

I've studied how pre-NNUE stockfish worked and the principles of static position evaluation are accessible to a 500 rated player. The rest is writing an efficient search algorithm, which is purely an endeavor in computer science, not chess playing. So your expertise in programming gave you the leg up here, and predictably your opponents experience in chess doesn't help. Your point only serves to bolster TFA's argument.

[esikich]

You can say that about any domain. I'm done with this. What I'm hearing from people is that AI is only for programmers and is useless for everyone else. And it honestly seems to be that way.

[fuzzfactor]

>AI is only for programmers

As we now know it, AI pretty much means a language model and the product of programming so many times is thought to be completely represented by the output of a language alone.

On top of that programming languages are more structured and logical than average, so impact on other less-logical efforts (having more scarce clear-cut examples in the same huge training set) can be expected to be less drastic even if they are language-centric also.

It really is working so well for some programmers so far that that's got to be a big one, and possible to push closer to the finish line than lots of other things. And it really is huge "software" companies that are putting up all the big bucks, dwarfing anybody else who's focusing on non-programming languages, or even more rare, non-language AI.

Almost all the money is being put into their own domain, how else would they have the decades of domain experience to best gauge progress which is still needed, plus get the most positive reinforcement from the underlying math & logic.

There's plenty of momentum and critical mass of people already where if AI does turn out to only be for programmers, they'll be just fine with that if they can just make it more true than it is already. That's enough work to keep them busy for the foreseeable future right there.

Doesn't look like any comparable momentum otherwise, it's like a snowball vs an avalanche.