Google's self-learning AI AlphaZero masters chess in 4 hours

Google's AI AlphaZero has shocked the chess world. Leaning on its deep neural networks, and general reinforcement learning algorithm, DeepMind's AI Alpha Zero learned to play chess well beyond the skill level of master, besting the 2016 top chess engine Stockfish 8 in a 100-game match. Alpha Zero had 28 wins, 72 draws, and 0 losses. Impressive right? And it took just 4 hours of self-play to reach such a proficiency. What the chess world has witnessed from this historic event is, simply put, mind-blowing! AlphaZero vs Magnus Carlsen anyone? :)

19-page paper via Cornell University Library

PGN:
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. d3 Bc5 5. Bxc6 dxc6 6. 0-0 Nd7 7. c3 0-0 8. d4 Bd6 9. Bg5 Qe8 10. Re1 f6 11. Bh4 Qf7 12. Nbd2 a5 13. Bg3 Re8 14. Qc2 Nf8 15. c4 c5 16. d5 b6 17. Nh4 g6 18. Nhf3 Bd7 19. Rad1 Re7 20. h3 Qg7 21. Qc3 Rae8 22. a3 h6 23. Bh4 Rf7 24. Bg3 Rfe7 25. Bh4 Rf7 26. Bg3 a4 27. Kh1 Rfe7 28. Bh4 Rf7 29. Bg3 Rfe7 30. Bh4 g5 31. Bg3 Ng6 32. Nf1 Rf7 33. Ne3 Ne7 34. Qd3 h5 35. h4 Nc8 36. Re2 g4 37. Nd2 Qh7 38. Kg1 Bf8 39. Nb1 Nd6 40. Nc3 Bh6 41. Rf1 Ra8 42. Kh2 Kf8 43. Kg1 Qg6 44. f4 gxf3 45. Rxf3 Bxe3+ 46. Rfxe3 Ke7 47. Be1 Qh7 48. Rg3 Rg7 49. Rxg7+ Qxg7 50. Re3 Rg8 51. Rg3 Qh8 52. Nb1 Rxg3 53. Bxg3 Qh6 54. Nd2 Bg4 55. Kh2 Kd7 56. b3 axb3 57. Nxb3 Qg6 58. Nd2 Bd1 59. Nf3 Ba4 60. Nd2 Ke7 61. Bf2 Qg4 62. Qf3 Bd1 63. Qxg4 Bxg4 64. a4 Nb7 65. Nb1 Na5 66. Be3 Nxc4 67. Bc1 Bd7 68. Nc3 c6 69. Kg1 cxd5 70. exd5 Bf5 71. Kf2 Nd6 72. Be3 Ne4+ 73. Nxe4 Bxe4 74. a5 bxa5 75. Bxc5+ Kd7 76. d6 Bf5 77. Ba3 Kc6 78. Ke1 Kd5 79. Kd2 Ke4 80. Bb2 Kf4 81. Bc1 Kg3 82. Ke2 a4 83. Kf1 Kxh4 84. Kf2 Kg4 85. Ba3 Bd7 86. Bc1 Kf5 87. Ke3 Ke6

I'm a self-taught National Master in chess out of Pennsylvania, USA who was introduced to the game by my father in 1988 at the age of 8. The purpose of this channel is to share my knowledge of chess to help others improve their game. I enjoy continuing to improve my understanding of this great game, albeit slowly. Consider subscribing here on YouTube for frequent content, and/or connecting via any or all of the below social medias. Your support is greatly appreciated. Take care, bye. :)

[natereeves]

I wish alphazero could provide commentary on its own games

[commodoreNZ]

1500 years vs 4 hours. That will stick with me

[BrentAureliCodes]

I dont think many people realize that while it took 4 real world hours it took thousands of computing hours. They shard alphaZero into hunrdreds/thousands of instances and have them all play each other at once, then combine data, advance itself and repeat. It wasn't teaching itself playing 1 game at a time really quickly over 4 hours. Not that it matters though, just a FYI! Amazingly impressive.

[FrancisSims]

This is the ballsiest AI I've seen since Allen Iverson...

[dannyboyz]

Teaching AI how to beat humans at war has always sounded like a good idea.

[alephnull]

I wish I could teach myself chess in 4 hours and then crush the World Champion in a 100 game match.

[Yetiforce]

Can't wait for your other 99 'AlphaZero vs Stockfish' videos!

[vortexshift]

9:26
mom: "stop eating the cookies!"
me: "No, I want more."

[Playncooler]

Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura stated "I don't necessarily put a lot of credibility in the results simply because my understanding is that AlphaZero is basically using the Google super computer and Stockfish doesn't run on that hardware; Stockfish was basically running on what would be my laptop. If you wanna have a match that's comparable you have to have Stockfish running on a super computer as well.

Stockfish developer Tord Romstad responded with "The match results by themselves are not particularly meaningful because of the rather strange choice of time controls and Stockfish parameter settings: The games were played at a fixed time of 1 minute/move, which means that Stockfish has no use of its time management heuristics (lot of effort has been put into making Stockfish identify critical points in the game and decide when to spend some extra time on a move; at a fixed time per move, the strength will suffer significantly). The version of Stockfish used is one year old, was playing with far more search threads than has ever received any significant amount of testing, and had way too small hash tables for the number of threads. I believe the percentage of draws would have been much higher in a match with more normal conditions.

Until I see them playing on equal hardware, I remain sceptical.

[QualeQualeson]

Very interesting. You know, the part where Alpha0 sort of overrides it's own initial move, presumably accepting a slightly weaker position in order to keep playing... that's where stuff starts getting kinda intense. Soon maybe we'll be a a point where we can't explain the moves being made unless an AI tells us.

[protectedmethod]

I've been waiting for this video from you. There's some other real gems in the other 10 games. I would like to see you analyze some of the others.

[Phoenix-oxjr]

I didn’t know stockfish could resign. I can’t recall it ever happening until now.

[AmabossReally]

I think the day has come where Chess finally understand fortresses. For long, computers have had weaknesses in calculating very locked positions but AlphaZero may have changed everything.

[ClemensAlive]

BOOM! Tetris for...no sorry, nevermind

[RecalcitrantBiznis]

"and this bishop has been suffering from tall pawn syndrome..." hahahahaha hahaha....

[yahyaable]

The best video tackling this topic on YouTube so far !

[therealpyromaniac]

The fact that AlphaZero could have got a draw several times as black against Stockfish 8 but CHOSE to play on is kinda scary.

[modolief]

4 hours of training to achieve superhuman performance. One thing to clarify: That's 4 hours of training using "5, 000 first-generation TPUs to generate self-play games and 64 second-generation TPUs to train the neural networks" (go read the paper). I.e. _more than 20, 000 compute hours_ -- the researchers had access to quite the large data center. AlphaZero trained on a much larger compute cluster than was used to *play* the games versus Stockfish. All that training was analogous to the years of programmer time and testing time used to write Stockfish.

[nikagam]

why am I watching this, I don't even know how to play chess.

[Biohazard]

I want to see a 5v5 Dota 2 match: OpenAI vs Alpha Zero