Bill Robertie described, in a short letter to Inside Backgammon, his finding that Backgammon had a depth of 8, Chess 14, and Go 40. So what about the Imitation Game? What is the depth of the human game? Here, all of the sudden, the depth of the game itself says something directly about human intelligence, not just the complexity (or lack thereof) of a given board game. Beyond what we can learn about intelligence from the computer play of board games: could studying comparisons made by the Imitation Game provide insights about the nature of human intelligence as well? Computer programs have taught us new things about Backgammon, Chess, and Go, but can they also teach us about ourselves?
Johan Ugander
Another insightful article related to the recent victory of AlphaGo over a human opponent, covering some historical perspective and the connections between the simplest games and the Holy Grail of AI research, the Turing test. It underlines again the distinction between AI getting increasingly better at a specific task (so good that chess-playing AI may soon have nowhere to improve) and an AI that can mimic the complex behavior of humans.
Amusing side-note: apparently Tinder uses the same Elo rating system to predict dating matches, giving a whole new meaning to the ‘game of love’.
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