When it comes to chess, computers seem to have nothing left to prove.
Since IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, advances in artificial intelligence have made chess-playing computers more and more formidable. No human has beaten a computer in a chess tournament in 15 years.
In new research, a team including Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor of Computer Science, developed an artificially intelligent chess engine that doesn’t necessarily seek to beat humans – it’s trained to play like a human. This not only creates a more enjoyable chess-playing experience, it also sheds light on how computers make decisions differently from people, and how that could help humans learn to do better.