Category: Games

Prophets of the Marginal Revolution, chess edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is my 2018 Bloomberg column on chess being a killer app for the internet and due for a boom.  I think people love seeing what the computer thinks of how the humans are playing.  What does that imply for the AI boom more generally?  Which other human activities will we enjoying seeing criticized, scrutinized, and sometimes praised, all in front of the eyes of the public?  Without computer assessments, watching chess games just didn’t have much built-in suspense for most viewers.  So where else will the new built-in suspense be coming?

Gender, competition, and performance: Evidence from chess players

by  Tyler Cowen in

This paper studies gender differences in performance in a male‐dominated competitive environment chess tournaments. We find that the gender composition of chess games affects the behaviors of both men and women in ways that worsen the outcomes for women. Using a unique measure of within‐game quality of play, we show that women make more mistakes when playing against men. Men, however, play equally well against male and female opponents. We also find that men persist longer before losing to women. Our results shed some light on the behavioral changes that lead to differential outcomes when the gender composition of competitions varies.

Here is the full paper by Peter Backus, Maria Cubel, Matej Guid, Santiago Sánchez‐Pagés, and Enrique López Mañas.  Via someone who is thanked in any case!

The game theory of geoengineering

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:

Imagine a world in which one consortium of governments proceeds with a climate plan — spraying sulfate aerosols into the air, brightening cloud cover over the oceans, maybe even dumping iron fillings into the ocean. Assume those policies are at least partially effective. Some other set of nations will respond by slowing down their costly transitions from dirty energy.

It’s not that these nations don’t care about the future of the planet. But successful geoengineering will induce them to lag in their more constructive efforts. Why go through a costly transition if the problem is being addressed? These nations might also conclude that the more they slow down, the more geoengineering the virtuous nations will undertake.

Our climate future is thus one of game theory. A nation such as Russia might go further yet and sabotage geoengineering efforts, perhaps with its own environmental tinkering. Even if such actions were seen as acts of war — well, these days that hardly seems beyond the pale.

In any case, such drastic responses are hardly needed for game-theory problems to come to the fore. It is easy enough for less conscientious nations simply to do less, once they observe that some successful geoengineering is in progress. Even within nations, states, regions and political parties are unlikely to agree how much geoengineering is appropriate, which could lead to inconsistent national policies over time.

And this:

None of this is an argument for banning geoengineering. In fact, humankind has been engaged in geoengineering for centuries — by pumping huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. And even if the world’s No. 1 scientific power (that’s the US, to be clear) rejects all intentional geoengineering, it is unlikely that all other nations will follow suit. Does the world really want to leave geoengineering in the hands of the Chinese? There is no choice but to try to make this messy situation better.

All worth a further ponder.

FT profile of me

by  Tyler Cowen in

By Henry Mance, mostly about me (as you might expect), here is the tale of when I first encountered Sam Bankman-Fried:

They played bughouse chess, a variation of the game. “He was good. He was better at bughouse than at chess. It’s a very important concept for understanding FTX. You have four people and two boards. If I take your piece on this board, I hand it to my partner, and my partner can plunk the piece down in lieu of making a move. You can be in this desperate situation, all of a sudden your partner hands you a queen. So there’s no balance sheet in bughouse chess. Things come out of nowhere to save you. You play desperately and take a lot of risk. If people play bughouse, that’s their core mentality.”

Here is the full profile.

Canine Coaseanism

by  Tyler Cowen in

We are for a while caretakers for a dog, and so I have started thinking what kind of trades I might make with the beast.  Of course for Darwinian reasons dogs have co-evolved with humans to be fairly cooperative, at least for some breeds (and this is a very smart, easily trained breed, namely an Australian shepherd).  So the dog’s behavior (my behavior?) already mirrors some built-in trades, such as affection for food.  But what kinds of additional trades might one seek at the margin?

One thought comes to mind.  I would like to signal to the canine that, when I get up from the sofa, he does not need to follow me because there is no chance I will offer him a food treat.  It would be better if he would just stay sleeping.  And yet this equilibrium is impossible to achieve.  Nor does rising from the sofa quietly succeed in fooling him, he follows me nonetheless.

Overall, though, I conclude that the current (spayed) version of the dog is already fairly Coasean in his basic programming.

Ohio teen fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

The number of 11th and 12th grade males experiencing gambling problems, such as lying about how much they lost, or being unable to control their gambling, rose to 8.3% in 2022 from 4.2% in 2018, according to one survey of 7,500 7th through 12th graders in Wood County, Ohio.

People who research and treat problem gambling say the line between gambling and videogaming is blurring. Videogames, which are often played on smartphones as well as computers and game consoles, include features that mimic gambling activities like roulette and slot machines.

Here is more from Clare Ansberry from the WSJ.

Computers are Better at Recognizing Faces than Cyborgs

by  Alex Tabarrok in

There was a brief window of time when computers could beat humans at chess but a human and a computer could beat a computer. In other words, there was a window of time when cyborgs could beat computers at chess. That window closed years ago (as Tyler predicted it would). Computers now beat humans and cyborgs. Humans aren’t especially evolved to be good at chess which is why only a few of us play chess well but we are evolved to recognize faces. Humans are incredibly good at recognizing faces. But computers are better. Even more surprisingly, computers are better at recognizing faces than cyborgs.

Psycnet: Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS) are used by governments, law enforcement agencies, and private businesses to verify the identity of individuals. Although previous research has compared the performance of AFRS and humans on tasks of one-to-one face matching, little is known about how effectively human operators can use these AFRS as decision-aids. Our aim was to investigate how the prior decision from an AFRS affects human performance on a face matching task, and to establish whether human oversight of AFRS decisions can lead to collaborative performance gains for the human-algorithm team. The identification decisions from our simulated AFRS were informed by the performance of a real, state-of-the-art, Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) AFRS on the same task. Across five pre-registered experiments, human operators used the decisions from highly accurate AFRS (> 90%) to improve their own face matching performance compared with baseline (sensitivity gain: Cohen’s d = 0.71–1.28; overall accuracy gain: d = 0.73–1.46). Yet, despite this improvement, AFRS-aided human performance consistently failed to reach the level that the AFRS achieved alone. Even when the AFRS erred only on the face pairs with the highest human accuracy (> 89%), participants often failed to correct the system’s errors, while also overruling many correct decisions, raising questions about the conditions under which human oversight might enhance AFRS operation. Overall, these data demonstrate that the human operator is a limiting factor in this simple model of human-AFRS teaming. These findings have implications for the “human-in-the-loop” approach to AFRS oversight in forensic face matching scenarios.

Hat tip: The excellent KL.

Bikers for Organ Donation

by  Alex Tabarrok in

In this cross-sectional study of 10 798 organ donors and 35 329 recipients of these organs from a national transplant registry from 2005 to 2021, there were 21% more organ donors and 26% more transplant recipients per day during motorcycle rallies in regions near those rallies compared with the 4 weeks before and after the rallies.

Both donors and transplants increase around the time of major motorcycle rallies.

Paper here.

Will Putin use nuclear weapons?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the entire thread.

#chessdrama splat

by  Tyler Cowen in

Chess.com, which has alleged many more instances of on-line cheating, is the fat lady that will sing (or not).  It strikes me as highly unlikely that they simply would have made up the existence of their further charges, especially since they claim to have produced a report and sent it to Niemann.  (You don’t have to think the report is correct, but I am betting it exists.)  In the meantime, chess.com did the right thing by sending their report to Niemann first, as they claim, rather than releasing it to the general public.  This way Niemann has a chance to rebut or defuse the allegations.

Note that Niemann, for all of his various denials, has not, to the best of my knowledge, denied that the chess.com report exists.  Nor do I see any direct evidence or statement that he will be providing a rebuttal.

In the meantime, I don’t think Carlsen is obliged to produce his own report.  I don’t understand why so many in the chess world or on Twitter are urging him to do this.  There may be libel issues in play as well, but arguably he is waiting for the chess.com report to come out, in addition to any possible rebuttal or lack thereof.  That is the information channel already in play, so to speak.

If a player has cheated repeatedly in on-line chess, should we let that same player participate in top-tier over-the-board tournaments?  To me the answer is an obvious no, and presumably Carlsen agrees.  Even if over-the-board cheating is very difficult or impossible to pull off, major distractions are created by the player’s history.  Or that same player might prove untrustworthy in other regards.

So the key elements here are the chess.com report and any possible Niemann rebuttal.  I am waiting for those.  Magnus is patient, and I am patient too.  The current state of imperfect information will not last forever.

The Kremlin cuts off the gas

by  Tyler Cowen in

Russia’s gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will not resume in full until the “collective west” lifts sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has said.

Here is more from the FT.  This seems to me a turning point of sorts.  Remember the old chess saying: “The threat is stronger than the execution”?  Well, this is the execution!

Europe bears the full burden today, and rather soon in the winter to come.  Over time, however, Europe will adjust and the Russian position and threat value will weaken each period.

It would make sense as a strategy if Russia were about to start negotiating for peace, but that is not my prediction.

It also would make sense if Russia thinks Europe is at the very end of its rope, and now will crack.  That also does not seem correct for me.

Or maybe Russia can’t think of anything else to do, and so they do this rather than nothing.  That would signal the Russian position is weaker than it looks.  Maybe.

In some accounts, the Kremlin has left itself a partial out.  Still, from the point of view of public opinion, very few are aware of this out.  So the Kremlin may have shot its negotiating wad.

Which means…?  How do we model this…?

Are chess players worse when playing remote?

by  Tyler Cowen in

During the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional (offline) chess tournaments were prohibited and instead held online. We exploit this unique setting to assess the impact of remote work policies on the cognitive performance of individuals. Using the artificial intelligence embodied in a powerful chess engine to assess the quality of chess moves and associated errors, we find a statistically and economically significant decrease in performance when an individual competes remotely versus offline in a face-to-face setting. The effect size decreases over time, suggesting an adaptation to the new remote setting.

That is from a new Economic Journal piece by Steffen Künn, Christian Seel, and Dainis Zegners.  I wonder if similar results might hold for Work from a Distance?

Via the excellent Samir Varma.

The robot chess culture that is Russian

by  Tyler Cowen in

According to the organizers of the tournament in the Russian capital, it was an “accidental” attack by the robot. A seven-year-old boy named Christopher, who, by the way, according to them, is among the top 30 chess players in Moscow under the age of nine, moved a piece on the chessboard earlier than he should, which led to the non-standard behavior of the robot.

The AI ​​robotic arm grabbed the young player’s index finger and squeezed his finger firmly. The people around the boy immediately rushed to help, but did not prevent the consequences in the form of a broken finger.

…We have nothing to do with the robot,” commented Moscow Chess Federation President Sergey Lazarev.

Here is the full story, via Austin Vernon.