How to Build a Chess Engine and Fail

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131 points xlinux | 2 comments | 19 Nov 24 06:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.428s | source

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skeltoac ◴[19 Nov 24 19:57 UTC] No.42187440[source]▶

I especially enjoyed the link to The Bitter Lesson by Rich Sutton, which I hadn't read before. Now I wonder what "discoveries" have been built into today's AI models and how they might come to be detrimental.

http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

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1. PaulHoule ◴[19 Nov 24 20:52 UTC] No.42187972[source]▶

>>42187440 #

Has there ever been a serious effort to play chess by "rule-based" methods as opposed to search?

(... other than the evaluation function being based on handwritten or learned rules)

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2. janalsncm ◴[19 Nov 24 21:10 UTC] No.42188126[source]▶

>>42187972 (TP) #

In the past, yes. That was essentially the approach up until the 1980s. Computers were too slow to run millions of evaluations per move, so you got a lot of efforts in a more heuristic-driven direction.

Examples of heuristic engines are Hans Berliner’s CAPS-II and PARADISE by David Wilkins. PARADISE used a database of 200 rules.

There are also engines that try to retroactively apply rules to Stockfish evals but they’re fairly confusing in my experience. It’s like being told the answer and having to come up with a reason after the fact.

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