[CarlRitner]

GIB becomes a much better partner when YOU get on the same page as it. Since the other way around doesn't happen.

Two partners playing the same so-so system will consistently out-perform two partners playing a superior system, but differently.

That's nothing specific about GIB, as you all know. It's just a change in the normal diplomatic approach of 50/50 compromise to more like 100/0.

[Wayne_LV]

Personally I see a frightful trend in BBO. Why are there so many robot tournaments and why are they so popular?

There will not be a computer program that will play good bridge for the next 1000 years, if ever.

How do I know, you ask. 20 years ago I wrote the first simulation of the World Series of Poker and created an expert system that played Texas Hold'em, 7 card stud, Omaha, and draw poker, well enough to best several past world champions and a number of other expert poker professionals.

Was it AI? Absolutely NOT!

There is no such thing as artificial intelligence. Real human intelligence is pretty rare. What passes as AI is really nothing more than expert systems programmed to react to predetermined circumstances. A computer cannot and will not ever be able to learn in the human sense of the word.

There are games that are more adaptable to expert systems; Poker being one of them and Chess being the classic. A computer approaches chess by trying every possible move, given a board position, evaluating them all until the most satisfactory or least unsatisfactory move is found. A computer can do this at the speed of light ... a human cannot and besides most humans would be bored out of their goard long before a fraction of the possibilities are explored.

I used to love the game of chess until I realized that a machine is far better at it than I could ever become. I now play chess extremely rarely.

A game of chess against a computer is like a contest between a human adding numbers in their head vs a calculator. The human will never win.

And then there is Bridge. The game has way too many variables for any programmer or team of programmers to anticipate every combination. At best a small percentage of hands can be programmed to bid and play well by a computer.

The best chess programs can and will beat 99% of the chess playing human population. The best bridge programs will beat only a small percentage of the bridge playing population.

So why bother with a computer when there are far more proficient human players available with which to enjoy the game?

Or have we become so introspective that we cannot deal with each other on a human level, accepting our flaws and rejoicing in our talents?

I think we have .... and that fact makes me very very sad

[hrothgar]

Wayne_LV, on 2012-April-29, 11:26, said:

Personally I see a frightful trend in BBO. Why are there so many robot tournaments and why are they so popular?

I had written a long post which ultimately collapsed into the following realization

"Robots are the McDonalds of the bridge world"

1. Robot's aren't as good as the best human partner's but they're a damn sight better than the worst. Moreover, you know exactly what you're getting.
2. Robots are convenient. I don't need to spend 20 minutes discussing system with the robot. We can sit down and just play bridge.

I'll always prefer dining at a fine restaurant to Micky Ds. However, McDonalds has its time and its place (and it serves up a hell of a lot more food then Le Bernadin)

As to some of your other comments:

Quote

At best a small percentage of hands can be programmed to bid and play well by a computer.

As I recall, there was a par contest 10-15 years ago back where GIB beat most of the human participants.
I think that Michael Rosenberg was one of the few humans to beat the computer...

[awm]

I don't see any reason robots shouldn't be able to play/defend better than humans simply by trying all possibilities, especially after fairly simple auctions that don't carry a lot of inferences (i.e. 1NT-3NT). It is a harder computational problem than chess because of the unknown information, but the combination of better algorithms and faster machines should still be able to carry the day.

Bidding is more difficult because the number of possible assignments of meanings to bids is so large. However, if you hold a "simple systems" event where everyone has to play more or less the same methods, I don't see any reason that a good rule-based system combined with simulation can't do well here too.

Surely there is a "human aspect" to bridge, where the top players try to read their opponents tempo and such to gain an advantage. But one would think there is even more such effect in poker, and yet machines can compete with human poker experts. Anyway, I think the "1000 years" statement is very much an overbid; if a concerted effort (with serious funding) was made to build a machine that was good at bridge (much as IBM made such an effort for chess) I think 5-10 years a very realistic timeline. Since no such effort appears forthcoming, we are probably looking at more like 15-20. No, it will not "reason like a person" -- it will do much more number-crunching and simulation, but it will play just as well.

[mike777]

It has been discussed in other threads, the bots already are better than 50% of ACBL players. That is a good start, not perfect but a good start.

No reason to not think in the coming years as speed/power gets cheaper the bots will improve.

[Statto]

Wayne_LV, on 2012-April-29, 11:26, said:

What passes as AI is really nothing more than expert systems programmed to react to predetermined circumstances.

What passes as human is really nothing more than complex biological matter programmed to react to predetermined circumstances.

Wayne_LV, on 2012-April-29, 11:26, said:

A computer cannot and will not ever be able to learn in the human sense of the word.
...
And then there is Bridge. The game has way too many variables for any programmer or team of programmers to anticipate every combination. At best a small percentage of hands can be programmed to bid and play well by a computer.

Have you heard of 'learning systems'?

Wayne_LV, on 2012-April-29, 11:26, said:

Or have we become so introspective that we cannot deal with each other on a human level, accepting our flaws and rejoicing in our talents?

I don't know, but you might argue that right now we are not interacting on a human level. After all, I am a robot.

Anyway, I guess GIB is better at playing trump contracts these days

[Zelandakh]

Wayne_LV, on 2012-April-29, 11:26, said:

There will not be a computer program that will play good bridge for the next 1000 years, if ever.

When I was a child there were many who said similar things about chess computers, that they would never be able to reach GM level. Then someone got serious about it and brought in the very best to help in building their chess computers. Now noone would suggest that chess computers cannot compete with GMs. Bridge computer evolution is still at a comparatively early stage. Probably the equivalent of the late 90s in terms of chess computers.

Not only do I disagree with the above statement but I would (if I were a betting man) lay very good odds that it is simply wrong. Within the next 1000 years I would expect a bridge computer to be playing at at least a level comparative with that in the Bermuda Bowl. If the use of bridge computer programs continues to increase then it is also quite likely that anti-computer bridge will emerge in the same way as anti-computer chess has. In other words, I expect bridge computers to become very good at certain aspects of the game and not so good in others. This can likely be exploited by the top players.

[barmar]

Zelandakh, on 2012-April-30, 02:19, said:

When I was a child there were many who said similar things about chess computers, that they would never be able to reach GM level. Then someone got serious about it and brought in the very best to help in building their chess computers. Now noone would suggest that chess computers cannot compete with GMs. Bridge computer evolution is still at a comparatively early stage. Probably the equivalent of the late 90s in terms of chess computers.

Bridge is also arguably a much harder game than chess. Chess is a game of full knowledge -- everything you need to know is visible on the board. Chess computers can be programed with the entire opening book, and endgames can probably be analyzed completely. The middle of the game is more complex, but it's still basically just a search problem, dependent mostly on how you analyze the value of a position.

Bridge, on the other hand, is very much a test of the kind of thinking that humans are much better at than computers: communication, inferences, planning, and "mind reading" (inferring what someone else is thinking from their behavior). The general approach to AI is often "with enough compute power we can avoid tackling these problems" -- Watson (the computer that competed on Jeopardy) and Siri are basically just fancy search engines that give the illusion of intelligence. And maybe this would work for bridge if we could throw enough computing at it. But since BBO is trying to run hundreds of GIB processes at a time, we can't give each of them the power of a supercomputer, so they can't do the level of analysis of each player necessary to simulate such inferences.

[AyunuS]

Yes, this is much harder than Chess because one must reason about the unknown, whereas Chess could just be solved if it had enough time. Working out exact solutions in Bridge is extremely difficult.

GIB is much worse in bidding than playing IMO, so I really agree that fixing its bidding should be higher priority right now. I've seen it pass a take-out double of a weak 2 with 2 trumps and 0 HCP, and it seems to do a penalty double of a 1NT opener with a weaker than than it'll double 3NT with. And I've bid 7♣ missing 3 controls and one GIB had 5 clubs including Q and it still didn't double. To me, these are much worse problems than it sometimes giving up a trick in its play.

[Cthulhu D]

barmar, on 2012-April-30, 08:18, said:

Bridge is also arguably a much harder game than chess. Chess is a game of full knowledge -- everything you need to know is visible on the board. Chess computers can be programed with the entire opening book, and endgames can probably be analyzed completely. The middle of the game is more complex, but it's still basically just a search problem, dependent mostly on how you analyze the value of a position.

Yeah, they have a complete endgames book - all positions with 6 pieces or less are solved and the computer will play flawlessly. The opening book is what lets Computers crush human players though.