A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Discussion of anything and everything relating to chess playing software and machines.

Moderators: hgm, Rebel, chrisw

noobpwnftw
Posts: 560
Joined: Sun Nov 08, 2015 11:10 pm

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by noobpwnftw »

People like H shouldn't have done what they did, however, there is not so much for "good faith" in computer chess programming anyways, this forum is full of it and I'm gladly contributing my part.
User avatar
towforce
Posts: 11589
Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:57 am
Location: Birmingham UK

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by towforce »

Tony P. wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:40 amGoogle has released Tensorflow under Apache 2.0, but that hasn't prevented it from making money off consulting businesses on the reuse of that lib and renting out TPUs, and indirectly off the reputation boost...

I'm a fan of Google, and they have released a huge amount of code in many areas into open source - and a lot of it is of very good quality. I don't know why they've done it (I suspect in some cases it stifles potential competitors), but I have personally benefited from using several of their open source libraries. A lot of the time, it just looks like generosity: they've made something good, and they're not going to sell it, so they give it away.
Writing is the antidote to confusion.
It's not "how smart you are", it's "how are you smart".
Your brain doesn't work the way you want, so train it!
Kiudee
Posts: 29
Joined: Tue Feb 02, 2010 10:12 pm
Location: Germany
Full name: Karlson Pfannschmidt

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by Kiudee »

Tony P. wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:40 am Just by making Leela available to Caruana, Ding and the other super-GMs fully for free instead of ad-hominem freemium coaching services, the devs have missed out on a 5 (maybe 6) figure amount. (Well, that was a consequence of Glaurung's GPL, but they could still have done the Fat Fritz cloud trick, for example.)
Interesting, how some people immediately think about how they can make money with something. The phrasing “missing out” somehow implying that it is your duty as a proper homo economicus to extract all the money you can.
One aspect which is overlooked here is that Leela Chess Zero and Stockfish are where they are because they are free and open. Leela would have never been a reality, if it wouldn’t have been supported by the large group of contributors.
User avatar
mvanthoor
Posts: 1784
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2019 4:42 pm
Location: Netherlands
Full name: Marcel Vanthoor

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by mvanthoor »

Rebel wrote: Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:50 am His (rightly) concern is that engine authors download the latest SF NNUE net and gain a free xx elo. Example, suppose I add NNUE (I won't, but suppose) to ProDeo and get and 150 elo gain on the rating lists because of that. 6-7 months later -- having changed not one bit on my engine -- I download the latest SF net, it gives me a free 30-50 elo, I release it and rub my hands seeing ProDeo climb and climb in the rating lists. I would say that's a very unhealthy situation and surely this (kind of things) is what's going to happen in the near future.

So while NNUE is a fantastic new development regarding increasing strength it has an unwished negative side effect and I can understand that some engine authors already now consider to stop.
The solution is simple. Split the rating lists:

1. One for 'classic' engines without any neural networks.
2. One for 'hybrid' engines that use classic stuff but also some sort of neural network add-on.
3. One for 'full' neural network engines such as Leela.

Then everyone can compete in exactly the space they want; people who want to compete with classic engines with hand-crafted evaluation (with eval tuning as the only automated option) can do so without getting frustrated of seeing other engines pass their own just because they got a NNUE added; if they do, those engines go to the 2nd rating list. People who are into generating and researching different networks can compete with other networks on the third list.
Author of Rustic, an engine written in Rust.
Releases | Code | Docs | Progress | CCRL
fabianVDW
Posts: 146
Joined: Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:46 pm
Location: Germany
Full name: Fabian von der Warth

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by fabianVDW »

mvanthoor wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 4:08 pm
The solution is simple. Split the rating lists:

1. One for 'classic' engines without any neural networks.
2. One for 'hybrid' engines that use classic stuff but also some sort of neural network add-on.
3. One for 'full' neural network engines such as Leela.

Then everyone can compete in exactly the space they want; people who want to compete with classic engines with hand-crafted evaluation (with eval tuning as the only automated option) can do so without getting frustrated of seeing other engines pass their own just because they got a NNUE added; if they do, those engines go to the 2nd rating list. People who are into generating and researching different networks can compete with other networks on the third list.
Where is the line? A PSQT is an in NNUE fashion incrementally updated Perceptron. Or do we only start calling it NN when it has multiple layers? Or perhaps when the inputs are more sparse, like a KingxPiece ([64][64]) table(which I've recently added to FabChess)?
Author of FabChess: https://github.com/fabianvdW/FabChess
A UCI compliant chess engine written in Rust.
FabChessWiki: https://github.com/fabianvdW/FabChess/wiki
fabianvonderwarth@gmail.com
Tony P.
Posts: 216
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:30 pm
Location: Russia

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by Tony P. »

Kiudee wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:25 pm Interesting, how some people immediately think about how they can make money with something. The phrasing “missing out” somehow implying that it is your duty as a proper homo economicus to extract all the money you can.
It's rather about bridging the gap between the work we love to do and the work we have to do to maintain ourselves. It's rather about making our hobby profitable so that we can afford to reduce the hours of daytime slavery.
Dann Corbit
Posts: 12542
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:57 pm
Location: Redmond, WA USA

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by Dann Corbit »

Tony P. wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 7:35 pm
Kiudee wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:25 pm Interesting, how some people immediately think about how they can make money with something. The phrasing “missing out” somehow implying that it is your duty as a proper homo economicus to extract all the money you can.
It's rather about bridging the gap between the work we love to do and the work we have to do to maintain ourselves. It's rather about making our hobby profitable so that we can afford to reduce the hours of daytime slavery.
I think trying to make money on computer chess is a mistake.
That is because people who are talented enough to write a winning chess engine can make far more money programming something else
Secondly, and more importantly, when you change chess programming from a hobby into a profession, it goes from fun to work
Now you must support it, now you must document it, now you must continue to make progress.
Sucks all the fun right out of it.

Now, there are a special few who can make money at chess programming. But I strongly suspect that they are driven by the intellectual challenge of chess programming and not the money in it, because there's not much money in it
Taking ideas is not a vice, it is a virtue. We have another word for this. It is called learning.
But sharing ideas is an even greater virtue. We have another word for this. It is called teaching.
Tony P.
Posts: 216
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:30 pm
Location: Russia

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by Tony P. »

I understand that chess is rather a stepping stone to more relevant and challenging games (incl. 'serious games' and robotics), but I'd still appreciate a bit of positive reinforcement along the way if I went that way :lol:
Dann Corbit
Posts: 12542
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:57 pm
Location: Redmond, WA USA

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by Dann Corbit »

Tony P. wrote: Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:02 pm I understand that chess is rather a stepping stone to more relevant and challenging games (incl. 'serious games' and robotics), but I'd still appreciate a bit of positive reinforcement along the way if I went that way :lol:
I don't begrudge people making money on it and even encourage it.
I have bought at least one copy of most professional chess programs and for some of them, I have bought a large number of vrsions.
Taking ideas is not a vice, it is a virtue. We have another word for this. It is called learning.
But sharing ideas is an even greater virtue. We have another word for this. It is called teaching.
Tony P.
Posts: 216
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:30 pm
Location: Russia

Re: A Crossroad in Computer Chess; Or Desperate Flailing for Relevance

Post by Tony P. »

Thanks! :)

One of the enigmas of CC is why people were spending crazy amounts on GPUs to train Leela nets instead of figuring out an NN architecture that would play superstrong on CPUs and save the users so much hardware cost that they'd even be better off paying for the engine to get the anecdotal 'humanlike style' experience. SF NNUE has solved that problem to an extent, but stronger CPU NNs may be discovered that will rival the GPU Leela even if she improves a lot.