Asking to people who believe Leela NN is a book, what they think about SF NN now?

[MikeGL]

...but perform a moderate start position alteration (invert bishops and knights, keep king/rook the same for castling) and you'll see relative performance drop against an engine with handcrafted eval.

Interesting claim, but I would like to see the said PGN games and stats of NN vs AB(with handcrafted eval) where start position was altered.
My common sense tells me that an NN or NNUE would still be able to play decent chess and can even destroy AB with handcrafted eval on that scenario because it will still easily detect strong outposts for N and B after a few moves.

[Dann Corbit]

The neural net file has literally nothing whatsoever to do with a book,
That is because there are no games in it and there are no positions in it, none whatsoever.
What it contains are numbers. The numbers say, "patterns with these features are good, patterns with those features are bad."
Now, if by "these features" or "those features" we were talking about positions, then it would be a book.
But that is not what is in there.

I guess that we don't totally know what it stores, but it simply has knowledge of the rules of the game and things that it decided were good patterns and things that it decided were bad patterns.

If it saw mobility made you win, it would give a good number to mobility.
If it saw having a space advantage made you win, it would give a good number to space.
The file that it saves has exactly zero positions.
If we should ban the net file, then we must also ban evaluation constants and human thinking.

IMO-YMMV
Calling it a book is strange. Very strange, especially when people who I think are smart say it

[mwyoung]

The neural net file has literally nothing whatsoever to do with a book,
That is because there are no games in it and there are no positions in it, none whatsoever.
What it contains are numbers. The numbers say, "patterns with these features are good, patterns with those features are bad."
Now, if by "these features" or "those features" we were talking about positions, then it would be a book.
But that is not what is in there.

I guess that we don't totally know what it stores, but it simply has knowledge of the rules of the game and things that it decided were good patterns and things that it decided were bad patterns.

If it saw mobility made you win, it would give a good number to mobility.
If it saw having a space advantage made you win, it would give a good number to space.
The file that it saves has exactly zero positions.
If we should ban the net file, then we must also ban evaluation constants and human thinking.

IMO-YMMV
Calling it a book is strange. Very strange, especially when people who I think are smart say it

I have seen people call it a EGTB also. I guess they don't know. I wish we could store all the information on a computer from being to end. But if that happened. No one would care about computer chess anymore.

[AndrewGrant]

As per title.

I've never been a fan of Leela, due to the fact that its just a book.
And frankly, I don't know how to read.

[mwyoung]

As per title.

I've never been a fan of Leela, due to the fact that its just a book.
And frankly, I don't know how to read.

I can tell you, it is not a book, or an EGTB. And if you think it was a book that means it has stored every position. And if you think that. You don't know as much about computer chess, as you think you do! Maybe you should consult a subject matter expert!

[Dann Corbit]

As per title.

I've never been a fan of Leela, due to the fact that its just a book.
And frankly, I don't know how to read.

Aye, and there's the rub.
Leela sings a beautiful song, and none of us even knows the key.

But I disagree. There is no book.

The robot bears the blade just as well, and with malice.

The book was not written by the lady
It was just a set of instructions how to kill
We, the gentle folk, knew little of her ways
But she borne razor knives the same, to force her wicked will

[Milos]

As per title.

I've never been a fan of Leela, due to the fact that its just a book.
And frankly, I don't know how to read.

Aye, and there's the rub.
Leela sings a beautiful song, and none of us even knows the key.

But I disagree. There is no book.

The robot bears the blade just as well, and with malice.

The book was not written by the lady
It was just a set of instructions how to kill
We, the gentle folk, knew little of her ways
But she borne razor knives the same, to force her wicked will

Your argumentation is on the level of cavemen. You are attaching divine attributes to things you don't understand. Cavemen thought sun is a beautiful god just because they didn't understand that sun is actually a giant fusion reactor.

[Milos]

...but perform a moderate start position alteration (invert bishops and knights, keep king/rook the same for castling) and you'll see relative performance drop against an engine with handcrafted eval.

Interesting claim, but I would like to see the said PGN games and stats of NN vs AB(with handcrafted eval) where start position was altered.
My common sense tells me that an NN or NNUE would still be able to play decent chess and can even destroy AB with handcrafted eval on that scenario because it will still easily detect strong outposts for N and B after a few moves.

It's not about which eval is stronger but about relative performance. A point Alayan is trying to make (IMO in a pretty clear way) is that NN has some memory about trained positions. A proof of that is that it doesn't have the same performance in positions that it has already seen and in those it hasn't. Classical evaluation function doesn't have that property. Therefore, in a repeated match starting from a known position NN vs classical eval engine would have a higher score in favor of NN engine than in case of very similar starting position that is unknown to NN.

So to answer the original question, no Leela NN is not a book, but it also is not just an evaluation function. It can make generalizations about positions in form of patterns, but it also has some sort of memory where it stores the best move. Does this memory give an additional advantage to Leela NN, it certainly does. Is this advantage fair, well that depends of how much you are a fanboy of Leela and it's clones/variants on one side, or SF on the other side.

[the_real_greco]

We still believe there is a difference between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity, and therefore still believe "Leela is an opening book" is a true statement.

In other words, it depends on what the definition of 'is', is.

[Dann Corbit]

We still believe there is a difference between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity, and therefore still believe "Leela is an opening book" is a true statement.

In other words, it depends on what the definition of 'is', is.

By this definition, are not the evaluation constants within an ordinary hand-tuned evalution also and opening book?