Raymond Keene

Frankenchess

issue 27 January 2018

A remarkable event took place in London towards the end of last year, when the AlphaZero computer program took on one of the leading commercial programs, Stockfish, in a 100-game match. Astonishingly AlphaZero won by the overwhelming score of 28 wins, no losses, with the remainder of the games being drawn. AlphaZero is the brainchild of Demis Hassabis and his team at Deep Mind. I had the pleasure of playing against Demis in a simultaneous display when he was just eight years old. It was absolutely evident that he possessed an extraordinary intellect, and he has gone on to invent revolutionary processes for creating new types of AI. He was awarded CBE in the New Year’s Honours list. In my opinion, he is nearly up there with Newton and Darwin in the pantheon of British geniuses.
 
The key to the Hassabis software system is not brute force calculation but an almost infinite capacity to learn by experimentation, based on a vast number of games it has played against itself.

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