Rise of the Machines....Again

Tyler Cowen asks What are humans still good for? computers got better at chess than the best humans some years ago, but the human (grandmaster level)- computer team is still stronger than computers alone. If the time control is slow enough. At faster time controls the human simply adds noise.

Insofar as the above RybkaForum thread has a consensus, it is that most of these advantages have not gone away. But the “human plus computer” needs time to improve on the computer alone, and at sufficiently fast time controls the human attempts to improve on the computer may simply amount to noise or may even be harmful, given the possibility of human error. Some commentators suggest that at ninety minutes per game the humans are no longer adding value to the human-computer team, whereas they do add value when the time frame is say one day per move (“correspondence chess,” as it is called in this context.) Circa 2008, at ninety minutes per game, the best human-computer teams were better than the computer programs alone. But 2013 or 2014 may be another story. And clearly at, say, thirty or sixty seconds a game the human hasn’t been able to add value to the computer for some time now.

- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/what-are-humans-still-good-for-the-turning-point-in-freestyle-chess-may-be-approaching.html#sthash.85kY6tYK.dpuf

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