AI – It's your move (2022)

From the June 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Last year’s World Chess Championship in Dubai saw reigning Champion Magnus Carlsen and his challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi draw one game in what has been billed as the most accurate game of championship chess in history. That is, according to the best available computer analysis neither player made a move that appreciably lost nor gave any advantage. An article on the event noted that the analysis suggests that chess games at the top level have been getting progressively accurate, and more so since advanced computer analysis became truly available to players (tinyurl.com/2p8x9mb4).

This is an instructive example of computers and humans interacting to provide increasing accuracy and effectiveness. The event which saw then World Champion Gary Kasparov defeated by a computer, in 1997, has been seen as a landmark in the progress of the development of machine thinking, and the point at which computers became better than humans (even if, at the event, the computer required human adjustment to its programming between matches to achieve the feat). In 2016, a computer programme called AlphaGo defeated one of the best human minds at the complex Japanese game of Go. Go is considered harder for machines to play, since it is much more intuitive and probabilistic than chess, but AlphaGo was trained to play it through machine learning. Again, the expectation is that the best Go players will now improve through using computers to analyse their games for flaws and plan their strategies.

It is now a commonplace in chess circles to talk about ‘computer moves’ that appear utterly unintelligible to the human mind, but which the computer proves make sense, about 14 moves down the line. The computer can now see lines that the human mind just wouldn’t be able to begin to consider (because they often violate the general principles of play in the immediate instance).

Researchers are now trying to train computers to play more like humans. They have trained a neural net to be able to identify players just by their moves and playing style, which will, in the future, enable computers to offer a more bespoke approach to using computer assistance. ‘Chess engines play almost an “alien style” that isn’t very instructive for those seeking to learn or improve their skills. They’d do better to tailor their advice to individual players. But first, they’d need to capture a player’s unique form’ (tinyurl.com/263ej48a). Or, as the paper’s abstract puts it: ‘The advent of machine learning models that surpass human decision-making ability in complex domains has initiated a movement towards building AI systems that interact with humans’ (tinyurl.com/2p9a7fwk). There are considerable commercial applications for such capacity, not to mention the police and security implications of such stylometric analysis that goes beyond the chess board.

In the field of sport, we’ve seen technology appear to improve umpiring decisions, particularly the ever-controversial leg-before-wicket rule in cricket. The introduction of ball tracking technology (alongside Hotspot and ‘Snicko’) has not only improved the accuracy of decisions finally taken, but they have also influenced the umpires’ decision-making in the first place. What they previously, to the naked eye, might have considered not out has been empirically proven to be a legal dismissal. Umpires have learned to adapt and reduce the chance of themselves being overruled by the machine.

Perhaps the most extreme manifestation of this human-computer interaction was announced in December last year: human brain cells in a Petri dish were trained to play a computer game (tinyurl.com/2p9efekb). That they learnt faster than computer AI is itself intriguing, and is indicative of the issues that have been around development of AI for a long time. While computers have promised a general adaptive intelligence since they were first conceived of, a great deal of research has yet to produce tangible results beyond the very restricted rules-based situations in chess or Go.

The dream of driverless cars, for example, has taken a great deal of a knock. In practice the cars tend not to respond well to the chaotic environment of a real road (which has led to a number of fatalities during the testing of these machines. The fact that their sensors can be fooled by something resembling the white lines of a road (or even worse, actually spoofed into thinking something is a road by malicious actors) has seriously dented the idea that there will be a general roll-out of driverless vehicles on our roads any time soon.

This ignores the possibility of even more dangerous things such as hackers gaining control of automated driving systems and using them to make the car do what they want.

This is itself alarming, as military applications of AI are being increasingly deployed in the real world (and form part of the current military competition between the US and China. Last year, the British government announced that its forces had deployed AI in combat manoeuvres:

‘Through the development of significant automation and smart analytics, the engine is able to rapidly cut through masses of complex data. Providing efficient information regarding the environment and terrain, it enables the Army to plan its appropriate activity and outputs […] In future, the UK armed forces will increasingly use AI to predict adversaries’ behaviour, perform reconnaissance and relay real-time intelligence from the battlefield’ (tinyurl.com/5nrbxv7t).

Of course, some of this is puffery to promote the armed forces but the AI competition between powers is real. It isn’t just in the development labs, though. In the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Azerbaijanis used AI-assisted drones to considerable effect:

‘Relatively small Azerbaijani mobile groups of crack infantry with light armor and some Israeli-modernized tanks were supported by Turkish Bayraktar TB2 attack drones, Israeli-produced loitering munitions, and long-range artillery and missiles, […] Their targeting information was supplied by Israeli- and Turkish-made drones, which also provided the Azerbaijani military command with a real-time, accurate picture of the constantly changing battlefield situation’ (tinyurl.com/4cwb37au).

Wikipedia defines a loitering munition as: ‘a weapon system category in which the munition loiters around the target area for some time, searches for targets, and attacks once a target is located’ (tinyurl.com/bdhmmvp7).

The applications are still limited, but given that drone swarm displays have become as common and spectacular as fireworks, it’s clear that the technology exists for serious damage to be done on a wide scale with these devices, and some of the finest minds in the world are looking to make them even more lethal and autonomous to combat potential threats to communication lines.

Tellingly, in parliamentary answers, the British government refuses to back a moratorium on autonomous killing devices: ‘the UK will continue to play an active role[…], working with the international community to agree norms and positive obligations to ensure the safe and responsible use of autonomy’ (tinyurl.com/2p8vbkr5).

The fact is that no-one quite knows where this will end. Futurologists talk of an event called ‘the Singularity’, a point in time beyond which we cannot make meaningful predictions and after which is a completely unrecognisable world. The likeliest cause of an imminent singularity, they claim, is the invention of superhuman intelligence, capable of redesigning and improving itself. This would in turn lead, so they claim, to new innovations coming so fast that they would be obsolete by the time they were implemented.

At present, this remains theoretical, and decades of research into artificial intelligence and machine learning still has not provided even a theoretical route to a machine capable of general intelligence, as opposed to a specific task-focused capability.

‘The common shortcoming across all AI algorithms is the need for predefined representations[…]. Once we discover a problem and can represent it in a computable way, we can create AI algorithms that can solve it, often more efficiently than ourselves. It is, however, the undiscovered and unrepresentable problems that continue to elude us’ (tinyurl.com/26ve3zky).

Computers can work very effectively at what they do, but they lack intention or volition. At www.chess.com/computer-chess-championship computer engines tirelessly and sterilely play each other at chess, endlessly making moves with no love for the game nor pleasure in victory.

We can look forward to the impact of AI on our lives being a co-operative effort between humans and machines. This article, for instance, was written with the assistance of Google’s searching algorithms to bring up relevant articles at a moment’s notice, replacing hours of research in a physical library.

Action Replay: All Above Board (2013)

The Action Replay Column from the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let’s not argue about whether chess is a sport: it certainly contains plenty of rivalry, financial shenanigans and back-biting. It’s probably lost some of its public profile since the days of Bobby Fischer and the rivalry between American and Russian players that echoed the Cold War.

But the world championship has long been ensnared in rows about money. Players, usually with the help of private backers, used to provide a purse on a winner-take-all basis. Then Emanuel Lasker, who won the championship in 1894, demanded that the challenger provide the whole of the stake, which had the effect, if not the intention, of reducing the number of championship matches. There followed lots of controversies about how to organise the championships and how to handle the money.

It was only in 1946 that the World Chess Federation (FIDE) set up an official series of eliminators and standard formats for the final champion vs challenger play-off. In 1999, FIDE was recognised by the International Olympic Committee, and Olympic-style anti-drug rules were adopted (so it must be a sport, then).

Last year, FIDE awarded the commercial rights to the world championship to Andrew Paulson, an American capitalist with his finger in several Russian pies, who has grand ideas for the game. The elimination rounds will be played in glamorous venues in big cities, with lots of media coverage. TV viewers will see the players’ pulse rates and so on. ‘Spectators will be able to see with the eyes of a grandmaster and feel with the heart of a player’, claimed Paulson (Financial Times, 21 September 2012). Sponsors, it is envisaged, will cover the costs and the sizeable prize money.

The latest Candidates tournament was held in London in March. The Norwegian Magnus Carlsen won and will challenge current world champion Viswanathan Anand in November. Carlsen, who is only 22, is sponsored by the Oslo-based investment bank Arctic Securities, for whom he works as some kind of ambassador. As Carlsen says on the company’s blog, for both chess players and banks, ‘precision is of the essence and mistakes can be fatal.’ Mind you, chess players generally play no part in global financial meltdowns.

Paul Bennett

Passing Comments: The City (1950)

The Passing Comments Column from the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The City

The government's efforts are appreciated in some quarters. V. J. Burtt, the City Editor of the Daily Herald, wrote on June 22nd: “Fresh signs of Britain's healthy economic progress are to be seen almost every day. They are scattering the prophets of gloom. On the home front, the strong rise in British government stocks, which made further headway yesterday, reflects confidence in government policy." And two days later the City Editor remarked: “During the past month there has been renewed buying of British government securities by foreigners who believe Britain is making great headway." So shareholders, both British and foreign, are confident that the government will look after them.


Railway Nationalisation

Mr. V. M. Barrington-Ward, C.B.E., is the son of Canon Barrington-Ward, D.D., and the brother of Sir Lancelot Barrington-Ward, K.C.V.O. He was educated at Westminster School and Edinburgh University. He has held posts on the managerial side of the railways since 1919, beginning at the “bottom” (as Assistant Engineer to the Engineer-in-Chief of the Midland Railway) and working his way up; by 1947 he had become Divisional General Manager on the L.N.E.R. With the “revolution” of 1948, when the railways were nationalised, he passed naturally to a comfortable job on the new Railway Executive. So when he gives his views of nationalisation, they should be worth examining; especially when he gives them in the “Trifler” (of June, 1950), a Westminster School magazine which is intended mainly for the consumption of past and present Westminster boys.

  “To my mind, socialisation” [he means nationalisation] “of our railways is a natural event in transport history. The shareholders of the four old Companies have had a blessing in disguise if the true financial position of the Companies after the war is critically examined. It is perfectly true to say that if these Companies had been given back their property after the war (during which time they operated under a Control Agreement) they would have quickly been in financial difficulties, and it needs no words of mine to elaborate what this would have meant. As it is, under the Transport Act of 1947, they have been given a Guaranteed Stock which has, at least, a capital value at a reasonable rate of interest.”

When we recall that during the first year of nationalisation the shareholders received each week more than five hundred thousand pounds interest on their stock, we can agree with Mr. Barrington-Ward that they have had a blessing; though perhaps the disguise he mentions was not very heavy.


The Duke of Windsor

Compton Mackenzie's “Windsor Tapestry” tells the story of the life, reign and abdication of the Duke of Windsor. In it the author complains of the mean spirit shown by Parliament in refusing to give the Duke a pension “in gratitude for a quarter of a century's devoted service to the State.” Further evidence is now available of the poverty to which the Duke was reduced.

The Daily Mirror had an article on the Duke's sartorial habits (9-6-50): “The Duke orders about 12 suits a year, paying roughly £50 for each—which is comparatively little for America. Even with evening dress, he never wears a waistcoat. So this helps keep prices down.”


Luxury Cruise

Here is part of the account of the great African cruise on the Cunard White Star liner Caronia which appeared in the American magazine “Life” (3-4-50). It needs no comment.

  “The Caronia’s 550 American passengers had paid nearly $3 million for basic accommodation on the luxury liner. The cheapest fare for the 80-day trip, half-occupancy of an inside stateroom, was $2,400. The highest was $20,000 for a suite. These prices included food and lodging, but not very much else. To participate in all of the optional shore excursions at the vessel's 28 ports of call in the West Indies, South America, Africa and the Middle East, a passenger would have to fork out an additional $6,646.
  “This probably was no great hardship for the Caronia’s cruisers. The passenger list glittered with names like Urschel and Vanderbilt, and the Reuters news agency estimated the combined wealth of those aboard at ten times the cost of the ship. The Caronia cost $20 million.”

Stalinists Begin Here

It is time we heard something more of Soviet chess. Readers will remember that Suzanne Labin's book “Stalin’s Russia” (reviewed in the Socialist Standard last January) reported the Soviet Public Prosecutor, Krylenko, as saying “We must make an end to neutrality in chess. We must once and for all condemn the formula 'chess for the sake of chess’ just as we have condemned the formula 'art for art’s sake.’ We must organise shock-brigades of chess-players and set ourselves to carry out a 5-year plan for chess immediately.” Surely Harry Pollitt should take the lead in the founding of a true people’s game, with miniature Stakhanovites in place of pawns (which are revealed by their very name as monarcho-fascist dupes, tools of imperio-capitalism), Red Army tanks in place of castles. Heroes of Soviet Motherhood instead of knights, and anti-God commissars in place of bishops. (Sorry—we forgot that Stalin is now the protector of the Russian Church; purge that anti-God commissar and we'll have a Metropolitan Patriarch instead.) Since both the king and queen—viewed from different angles—can lay claim to being the most important piece on the board, obviously a model of our great leader Stalin must be both. This will be a little confusing at first, but fortified with the limitless resources of Leninism-Stalinism, and confident of the eventual inevitable victory of the forces of Peace, War and what have you, we will march on to world-wide democratic success. And anyone who is unable to re-orientate himself to the correct line will do five extra shifts a week in honour of Uncle Joe’s next birthday.

Alwyn Edgar

Chess and Politics (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

One can find connections between almost any kind of sport or game and politics. Sometimes these things have profound international repercussions, as for example the “body line bowling” episode of the professional cricketers some years ago which nearly led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between England and Australia.

Chess has been the game that has been played by revolutionists of various kinds for a century, and its enthusiasts claim it as the only really international game.

Many of the earlier Socialists were chess players; sometimes their chess was better than their Socialism. Marx played chess, and so did Engels. William Liebknecht was quite an accomplished player, and so frequently did he beat Marx, that the latter lost much interest in the game. Lenin, Trotsky, and their circle were all keen chess players and Lenin was constantly warning the Bolsheviks of his early days not to take too much interest in chess, as the revolution was “round the corner.”

A century ago the English and French aristocrats were the world’s best chess players, producing many brilliant masters; then the centre of the arena changed to America and Germany. Those who were able to devote the thousands of hours of study to the game that it needed were, needless to say, men of the leisured class.

When chess drifted to Russia it found many active participants in the Russian upper-class circles. When the first World War broke out, there was a masters’ tournament actually in progress at Mannheim. The participants (mostly Russians) were all interned for four years with nothing else to do than play chess till the war finished.

Meanwhile Soviet Russia has developed its chess talent, and given State support to chess in a way unheard of before. Enormous halls are used for tournaments with their walls covered by gigantic chess boards for recording the moves of the master games in progress. Chess players sit for hours and listen to a medley of Soviet propaganda mixed with chess. Chess talks are broadcast with all the enthusiasm of our football commentaries.

In the past chess could never command a “gate” and all efforts to commercialise it were frustrated; but Russia has not only commercialised it, but made chess a vehicle for political propaganda.

Four years ago a team of Russian players visited London and played in Holborn Town Hall. As soon as play was over each day, the Russian masters were quickly bundled into a number of gigantic Daimler cars (probably belonging to the Embassy), and hurried off without the possibility of anyone being able to have a word to say to them. Accepting the many invitations from chess clubs and private players who wanted an opportunity of making friends with them, was out of the question. The Russians were shepherded in and out very much like prisoners who were permitted to have a day off to go straight to church, and then immediately it was over, to return to their cells.

Now that Germany is divided into two zones, players in Eastern Germany are not permitted to visit players in the Western zone (in case they don’t come back—once a chess player’s moved, he’s moved, is the rule in chess). Consequently Western Germans visit the Soviet zone, after a nightmare of pass controls and form filling. But before play can start they are treated to lengthy speeches on freedom, peace, and the abolition of the atomic bomb. Before they depart they are pressed to sign numerous peace pledges against the aggressions of American Imperialism.

In recent numbers of “Schach Express,” a chess magazine published in the Soviet zone of Berlin, we find reports of speeches made by Stalin and his German comrades against the use of the atomic bomb. In “Schach Express” (August. 1950) the Editorial is headed “Chess masters outlaw the atomic bomb.” The June issue contains several pages of reports of mass political demonstrations with pictures of marching youths with flags and banners—all demonstrating against the atomic bomb. The main article is headed “German youths support the Front of Fighters of Peace.” In a tournament book, “Sommerda Thuringer 1950” pictures show famous chess players queueing up to sign protests against war, or declarations of freedom, and is headed “Chess players fight for peace.” On another page the main political article (of this chess book) concludes with slogans in extra large type:

“ Sportsmen; you are not cannon fodder for the Imperialists but fighters for democratic unity and the national independence of Germany.”

In the “nineteen-twenties” Cuba commercialised chess in a peculiar way by making Capablanca (then world champion) “Ambassador Extraordinaire”! If there was an international chess tournament in Moscow or Mexico; or Cape Town or Camden Town, he was sent along by the Government to look after the interests of Cuban nationals who might need him. It is reputed that he was paid £10,000 a year for this, and is probably the only one who has ever made any real money out of chess. The Cuban Government sponsored it to put them "on the map”!

While on this subject the question is always being asked—does chess develop one’s brains? If so it might have a therapeutic value, for those who are deficient in this highly prized quality. In reply to this question which the writer once asked Capablanca, the latter replied, "Most certainly, playing chess develops one’s brains for playing chess.” We therefore doubt if it could be used for developing the "latent brains” of the working class, so that they might more readily understand the social factors which are responsible for the continued existence of Capitalism.

H. Jarvis

Chess and politics (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chess, which has been played for several centuries, is now a big-money, nationalistic sport just like World Cup football. Variations of the game existed in India and China nearly fourteen hundred years ago. Persian manuscripts dated about 600 AD refer to the game, and board games resembling chess have been found in Egyptian tombs over 3,000 years old.

In pre-capitalist times chess met disapproval and was even banned by the Christian and Islamic religions because it was used for gambling. Gamesmanship, hustling and patronage seemed to have emerged in the 15th century with the progression of the game to its present form, as modifications to the moves of some of the pieces made it more interesting and more widely played. Money could be made for the top players from gambling and sponsorship by the rich and influential. Such was the competition and jealousy aroused by the prospects of fame and fortune that Paolo Boi and Giovanni Leonardo were poisoned by rivals in the 16th century.

Wilhelm Steinitz was the first player to become recognised as "world champion" after he defeated Anderssen in 1866 although before this a number of players had been unofficially recognised as the strongest players of their time. Although there has never been the rigid distinction between amateur and professional players that exists in other sports, chess prior to the 1860s had been dominated by men with private incomes as the time demanded for tournament participation effectively excluded workers. The development of chess clocks to time the moves, making the games of reasonable length, and properly arranged tournaments enabled professional players, without private income or sponsors, to compete for prize money.

When spectators were charged half a guinea (52½p) entrance fee in 1876 to see Steinitz play Blackburne at the West End Chess Club, London The Chessplayer's Chronicle was outraged: "The thoroughly mercenary spirit in which this latest exhibition of professionalism was conducted throughout has heartily disgusted all true chessplayers." (Hartson. W 1985 The Kings of Chess, Pavilion Books, London)

The chess establishment was shaken again in 1890 when Steinitz defended his world title against Isidor Gunsberg and agreed that the winner should receive two thirds and the loser one third of the prize money put up by backers instead of the winner taking all. Nevertheless, Steinitz was unable to make a satisfactory living from the game and when asked why he had competed in the taxing 1898 Cologne tournament when over 60 years of age, he replied: "I can spare the fame but not the prize money".

The next world champion Emanuel Lasker, who defeated Steinitz in 1894, was determined not to suffer the poverty of his predecessor and insisted on a higher remuneration for his appearances in tournaments and exhibition games. But Lasker failed to improve the financial circumstances of his fellow chess professionals. Karl Schlechter, the gifted Viennese player who had been strong enough to hold Lasker to a drawn world title match in 1910, died of pneumonia brought about by malnutrition in 1918 and Akiba Rubinstein, winner of 21 major tournaments, ended his career in poverty.

In common with most other sports, the history of chess is one of struggle both for the establishment of the game and for the players until modern methods of communication, and television in particular, reached audiences of millions. Chess "superstars" emerged, able to earn considerable sums of money from their playing abilities. But, also in common with most other sports, chess became a political weapon marked by bitter nationalistic rivalry.

Alexander Alekhine, world champion 1927-35 and 1937-1946, proved a useful tool in the hands of the Nazis. Between 1941 and 1943 he played in a series of tournaments in Nazi-occupied countries and in 1941 wrote a series of articles entitled "Jewish and Aryan Chess" in which he tried to "prove" the superiority of Aryan "attacking" play against Jewish "defensive" methods. Apart from the absurdity of such a racist hypothesis, the first two world champions Steinitz and Lasker were both Jewish Rubinstein, considered by many to have played the most perfect chess ever seen before the first world war, was a Talmudic scholar and ultra-orthodox Jew. In using Alekhine in their propaganda war the Nazis had chosen carefully. Alekhine had joined the Communist Party in his native Russia but later fled the country and denounced Bolshevism. In turn he was denounced and written out of Russian chess history where he had won prizes at St. Petersburg in 1912 and 1914.

Many of the chess Olympiads have been political events in which the interests of the sport took second place. The Munich Olympiad of 1936 was an advertisement for the Nazi regime; Albania refused to play South Africa at Siegen in 1970 and were defaulted 0-4; at Skopje in 1972 Albania refused to play Israel and were scored 0-4; they then withdrew and the entire score was annulled; the Nice Olympiad was a political circus rather than a chess event. Algeria and Iraq refused to play Rhodesia and Tunisia refused to play Israel. The results of these matches were estimated by computer. South Africa withdrew after FIDE (chess's ruling body) decided to expel them and defaulted their last three matches and Rhodesia were also expelled.

The most blatantly political chess event in recent years was the "Against Israel Olympiad" held in Tripoli in 1976 in opposition to the official Olympiad at Haifa. Mike Newman has described how, with a playing strength which could be barely sufficient to reach minor counties' standard in Britain, he played top board for Gambia and achieved a creditable personal score of 8 out of 13, such was the poor playing strength of the 34 competing nations attracted by Libya's payment of all expenses. (Chess vol. 42 pp. 63-64). Chess was encouraged in Russia after 1917 by an organised state programme, in part to discourage excessive drinking among the masses but also to raise the general cultural level, and for use as a political weapon against rival countries outside the Russian empire.

Chess in Russia prospered as a result of state sponsorship and the propaganda war was vigorously (though at times absurdly) pursued. Alekhine and Bogolyubov were praised, denounced for defecting to the West, and later rehabilitated as heroes. Krylenko too fell victim to the purges and was imprisoned and later shot on Stalin's orders for lowering the standard of chess. Even for such a monster as Krylenko the charge was grossly unfair as he had done a great deal to raise the level of chess (even if for the wrong reasons) and, indeed, his name was restored in the anti-Stalinist years when Khrushchev became leader.

The internal politics of FIDE have been governed by expediency; the rules controlling the conditions of the world championship tournaments and the Candidates' tournaments which decide who should play the world champion have been changed time and time again, bowing to political pressures and financial considerations more often that to the interests of the game. At times the pre-match squabbling before the Fischer v Spassky world championship in 1972 bordered in the farcical. And even before then Fischer had vociferously complained about the conditions of the Interzonal tournaments and accused the Russians of cheating in the Candidates' tournaments. Fischer probably had a genuine grievance because the Russians tended to play a large number of brief drawn games against each other and saved their energy for long hard-fought battles against non-Russian players.

The Korchnoi v Karpov matches of 1978 and 1981 were even more farcical: Korchnoi had defected from Russia but his family were refused permission to leave. Tournaments in which Korchnoi appeared were boycotted by the Russians and his name did not appear in their chess publications. Korchnoi accused Karpov of trying to hypnotise him and receiving coded messages in yogurt. Karpov won both matches and, ridiculous as the arguments surrounding the matches seemed, like the Fischer v Spassky match, public interest was aroused. Chess enjoyed a spectacular boom as a result of the publicity.

Chess has become big business: the sale of chess books exceeds that of any other sport; Karpov has become the first chess millionaire; chess sets, chess clocks, score sheets and magazines secure world-wide sales. Capitalism impoverishes our lives; besides enslaving us economically it perverts even our leisure interests in the name of profit. Instead of being a stimulating game played in a spirit of friendliness, chess has been tainted by nationalism, commerce and political rivalry between capitalist states.

Carl Pinel