Silicon Beasts vs Humans: Who is Smarter?

Disclaimer: This is Not a top blog (although the author has been Demoted — twice)

We know well machines are faster. Yet, we humans possess something that cheap chips absolutely lack of. Something intangible that we are not even able to explain to us how it really works. Intuition. Our silent INner-TUtor.

This is a simple ending position from one of my games played recently. It will well serve the ultimate purpose of showing how opposed human thinking and that of computer beasts are.

You may not believe it, but you'll see how human thinking is much more efficient and effective on the conceptual level even though it is hundred of million times slower than computer's. Actually, computers do Not Think at all. They just mindlessly follow some rules the human programmer sets out for them to follow which consists in executing thousands of millions of computer processor instructions per second.

Okay, back to the position. White is material ahead and is, no doubt, winning (which brings us onto the material-advantage-realization territory that has proved a slippery one to many a developing player and is an important improvement topic to work on).

My opponent (White) has just played 24.Be2-f3 attacking my Pb7. Obviously, need to take care of my lil soldier. What else is directing my thoughts toward finding a solution to the threat? Well, Black has pawn majority on the Q-side, the inner tutor is whispering to my ear. This fact immediately suggests that Black should see whether he could mobilize the pawn majority for creation of a free pawn.

As you've noticed, so far it was just "looking ahead." In other words, thinking strategically. None of concrete moves have ever occurred in the mind yet. Here we can make a conclusion that, unless position is purely tactical, strategy always precedes to and gives hints on possible tactical solutions that should support that strategy. 

Back to Black's thought flow. The inner question was, "Is there a way to make use of the Q-side pawn majority and possibly create a free pawn? Yes, there is. It is important to learn how to play pawns well and instill it to the beginner very early in the learning process. This early skill also includes how to create a passer (that my Relational method for absolute beginners is introducing as early as Lesson Three) and indicates a pawn break (or "lever", Kmoch) may take place on the c4-square. Very good. Which encourages b7-b5 fitting the purpose perfectly.

Now, the time has come to double check the b7-b5 move. To let the analytic and logical System 2 do its part of job.

"I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check." —Magnus Carlsen

Patricio Betteo, Mexico

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Well, b7-b5 leaves the b5-pawn feeling a little bit insecure, to be honest. It is not protected and may easily come under enemy fire. Which actually happens in the game. Bf3-b7 first attacks Rc8 and after ...Rc8-c7, Bb7-a6 follows.

The b5-pawn seems to have found itself in a precarious situation. If it moves forward to escape attack, the entire pawn trio is suddenly blocked and stalled for moving any further. The pawn majority is crippled.

What about an immediate free pawn creation attempt by pushing the c-pawn forward right away? As White controls the c4-square more times than Black, the black  c4-pawn would seem vulnerable there.

So what should Black do after all?

The c5-c4 pawn break, anyway! with the little help of tactics, always handy there to be of service to Mother Strategy.

At this point I fire up my human calculation engine for the first time. Even though billion times slower than the silicon, the human engine is still adequately good enough to give two lines with no great effort,

1) 27.Bxb5 (as played in the game) 27...c3 and the passer is born (even stronger and more elegant is 27...cxb3! 28.Rxc7 b2). The game continues 28.Bc4 c2 and White resigns

2) 27.bxc4 Rxa2

Funny, the chess.com silicon beast is proposing ...Rxa2 only as the fourth option, giving the precedence to 27...b4, 27...Rxc4 and 27...bxc4. I didn't consider any of these three alternatives and actually stopped looking for any other move once my inner tutor whispered, "Play ...Rxa2 and the white Bishop is almost without moves." If your intuition has been properly educated, it will notice an enemy piece with reduced or non-existent movement ability in a flash (another improvement topic to work on).

Like a high-speed night train, intuition springs up without warning from the deep darkness of subconsciousness to brighten your path through the ill-lit labyrinths of chess (art Christoph Niemann, American, b.1970)

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In contrast to how intuition works, the chess engine will, in order to calculate all possible moves in position, repeatedly do reading, or fetching, instructions from computer memory and then carrying out, or executing, those instructions at a rate of, say, billion of times per second depending on the engine's processor clock speed.

For a human with an educated intuition, it takes place with no effort almost instantly.

After 27...Rxa2 28.Bxb5 (the only move) comes 28...a6 and the Bishop is trapped.

Now, if 29.Be8, then 29...Kf8. C'est tout fini.

So, again, who is smarter? Whose thinking is superior as more efficient? Human or fast monster's?

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ADDENDUM

Speaking of Silicon beasts vs Human "thinking efficiency", it may be worth citing the legendary Serbian GM Ljubomir Ljubojevic,

“Chess engines are not always right. I have experimented with it a number of times, in a position I would make a move using my intuitive judgment and then turn my last generation engine on, to show me that my move wasn’t even the forth, or fifth line of calculation. But after forty hours of constant crunching the machine finally shows that my move was the first line of play. After forty hours, can you imagine that?!”

The basic operation of a computer is called the ‘Fetch-Execute’ cycle. The CPU, Computer Processor Unit, is designed to understand a set of instructions (instruction is a single action that can be performed by a CPU). It fetches the instructions from the main memory (the part of a computer that stores data) and executes them.

In the case GM Ljubojevic describes, his latest chess engine did the following three-step cycle billion of times per second for forty hours (?!?),
1) the CPU fetches the instructions one at a time from the main memory into the registers (a type of computer memory used to quickly accept, store, and transfer instructions and data currently being used by CPU),
2) the CPU decodes the instruction,
3) the CPU executes the instruction.
The cycle is repeating until there are no more instructions to process.

In contrast, GM Ljubojevic intuitively found the best move with, say, two minutes of 'ticks' of his most refined chess 'brain-clock.'

Again, who is smarter?

  Christoph Niemann, USA

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