How long until AI generated chess engine enters top ten?

[smatovic]

The first chess playing engine by an AI is aleady here:
https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic. ... 20#p939245

What's your take, how long until AI generated engine enters top ten?

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Srdja

[Uri Blass]

How do you decide if AI is responsible for the engine or not?

AI can copy and paste a private code of some human programmer.

The more interesting question is how much time we need to see AI improve code of existing engine in the same way that human programmers do
so people who download the AI may have something that simply get better because the AI worked on their computer and found a way to improve the code.

I mean the idea is the following:
Suppose I download engine X1 with chess rating 3500 and I also download AI Y that works to improve chess engines.
Y work on trying to improve X1 and one month later I have on my computer engine X2 with rating 3550 when X2 is a derivative of X1.

[smatovic]

AI assist is already here

https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic. ... 20#p941520
https://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic. ... 20#p941479

And yes, the definition of "AI generated chess engine" is open, I guess we will disucss such a case in the Engine Origins subforum if it happens

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Srdja

[towforce]

I voted "8 years" - but I have just realised that there's a problem with my prediction: it's actually possible that the top 10 chess computers might become unbeatable over that time frame - in which case the concept of "entering the top 10" would become meaningless - like asking when a program authored by AI will enter the top 10 in tic-tac-toe.

[smatovic]

Yes, interesting times, so we have now two runs to the finish line in computer chess, 1) unbeatable engines on common hardware 2) unbeatable AI generated engines.

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Srdja

[Uri Blass]

Yes, interesting times, so we have now two runs to the finish line in computer chess, 1) unbeatable engines on common hardware 2) unbeatable AI generated engines.

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Srdja

Maybe we already have 1 if you do not use biased opening book.
Can you beat stockfish with no book at 3 minutes per move on common hardware with no pondering?
You are allowed to use book and you are allowed to use more time for the opponent.

[smatovic]

[...]

Yep, this is also a matter of definition, unbeatable chess engines (engine vs. engine) but to what conditions? Hardware, time control , opening, unbalanced opening books.

Our Centaurs post now and then in here that their game is over, maybe they were the first, and AFAIK TCEC uses unbalanced opening books, and the chess engine rating lists might be next over t.

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Srdja

[M ANSARI]

I think both LC0 and SF are AI engines. You can also add any engine that uses NNUE to that list. While everyone seems to be raving about ChatGPT today, and think that this is when AI really started to make a difference. Most of us that followed Alpha Zero several years ago, and how it demolished SF with just 4 hours of training ... realized that AI will dramatically change how we live. Most in chess understood that if AI can do what it did in chess then a major revolution is about to happen.

[smatovic]

One thing is pattern recognition, as used in A0, Lc0, SF NNUE, this was the historical usecase of AI based on neural networks, now the shift is to pattern creation, the "generative AIs"...

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Srdja