A Very Unlikely Chess Game

Published: Jan. 9, 2020, 7:51 p.m.

b'

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/06/a-very-unlikely-chess-game/

\\xa0

Almost 25 years after Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, another seminal man vs. machine matchup:

Neither competitor has much to be proud of here. White has a poor opening. Black screws up and loses his queen for no reason. A few moves later, white screws up and loses his rook for no reason. Better players will no doubt spot other humiliating mistakes. But white does eventually eke out a victory. And black does hold his own through most of the game.

White is me. My excuse is that I only play chess once every couple of years, plus I\\u2019m entering moves on an ASCII board I can barely read.

Black is GPT-2. Its excuse is that it\\u2019s a text prediction program with no concept of chess. As far as it knows, it\\u2019s trying to predict short alphanumeric strings like \\u201ce2e4\\u201d or \\u201cNb7\\u201d. Nobody told it this represents a board game. It doesn\\u2019t even have a concept of 2D space that it could use to understand such a claim. But it still captured my rook! Embarrassing!

'