Seminar Slide. www.arimaa.org

6. What it is (3/4). Rules: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/rules/ Online Gameroom: http:// www.arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom / Puzzles: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/puzzles/list.cgi Match Rules: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/rules/matchRules.html Bot ladders: http://www.arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/botLadder.cgi Arimaa Notation: http:// arimaa.com/arimaa/rules/notation.htm

9. History (1/10) The Turk was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen . From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854,it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was explained in the early 1820s as an elaborate hoax. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Arimaa history is rooted at that of Chess

10. History (2/10) “ Chess is generally considered to require ‘thinking’ for skilful play; a solution of this problem will force us either to admit the possibility of a mechanized thinking or to further restrict our concept of ‘thinking’.” “ Shannon noted the theoretical existence of a perfect solution to Chess and the practical impossibility of finding it.” Source: “ANALYSIS AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GAME ARIMAA” by Christ-Jan Cox Universiteit Maastricht Maastricht ICT Competence Centre Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology Maastricht, The Netherlands March 2006 Claude Shannon Link: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=67002

11. History (3/10) Alan Turing The "Turing" machine was described by Alan Turing in 1937. Turing Machine = Algorithm Universal Turing Machine = Computer 1951, Alan Turing develops on paper the first program capable of playing a full game of chess. Its play is best described as “aimless”; it loses to weak players.

14. History (6/10) You can visit the IBM page : http:// www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.shtml The creation of Arimaa was inspired by the Deep Blue vs Gary Kasparov match in which the computer defeated the world chess champion. Arimaa was created to show that humans can still outplay computers using a chess set and provide the next challenge to the AI community. Computer Chess Time - Level 60s – beginner 70s – intermediate 80s – grand master Finally in 1997 …

15. History (7/10) “ When will computer hardware match the human brain?” - 1997 http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm Hans Moravec Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University “ At the present rate, computers suitable for humanlike robots will appear in the 2020s”

16. History (8/10) Marvin Minsky - Father of AI 2000 - " No one has tried to make a thinking machine … The bottom line is that we really haven't progressed too far toward a truly intelligent machine. We have collections of dumb specialists in small domains; the true majesty of general intelligence still awaits our attack. We have got to get back to the deepest questions of AI and general intelligence and quit wasting time on little projects that don't contribute to the main goal. “ [as interviewed in "Hal's Legacy", Edited by David Stork] Source: http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap2/two4.html http:// www.agiri.org/forum/index.php?showtopic =45

18. History (10/10) Bill Gates - Founder, Microsoft 2004 - " If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts. " http:// www.agiri.org/forum/index.php?showtopic =45

20. Challenge The first person , company or organization that develops a program which can defeat the top human Arimaa players in an official Arimaa challenge match before the year 2020 will win the Arimaa challenge prize. The prize is currently $16,250 USD. The official challenge match will be between the current best program and three selected human players. To know more about the current challenge: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/challenge/2010/ Challenge Match: Apr 4, 2010 to Apr 24, 2010

22. Why this is hard (1/6) “ Human intelligence, refusing to be put on the back foot, is taking refuge in creative ingenuity, inventing games like Arimaa , which are specifically designed to be easy for humans but hard for artificial intelligence. “ BBC 28 August 2007 State of Play: Man versus machine By Margaret Robertson Video game consultant and writer Margaret Robertson She has written extensively about games for Wired and the BBC, and has edited Edge, the world's most respected videogame magazine. Now as a game designer and consultant, she works on videogame projects of all sizes, for mainstream (EA, Sony, DICE) and indie(Kuju, Zoonami) developers, as well as for educational organisations, broadcasters and major studios. Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol , as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent . Arimaa's a better game than I thought. It follows a fairly sound approach to making the game difficult for computers.

24. Why this is hard (2/6) Complexity Analysis The complexity of a game is measured by two different factors, the state-space complexity and the game-tree complexity . The state-space complexity roughly indicates the number of different board positions that are possible in principle. In Arimaa it is almost 1.66x10 43 . The game–tree complexity is an indication of how many nodes there are in the solution tree. The number depends on the specific search techniques used. In Arimaa it is almost 3.1x10 300 . “ Analysis and Implementation of the game ARIMAA “ by Christ-Jan Cox Universiteit Maastricht Maastricht ICT Competence Centre, Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology Maastricht, The Netherlands, March 2006 http://arimaa.com/arimaa/papers/CoxThesis/Cox_thesis1.pdf

26. Why this is hard (4/6) Source: “ Methods of MCTS and the game Arimaa” by Tom´aˇs Kozelek (Dec 2009) Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University in Prague Stability Tactical combinations are much less common than in chess. There are mainly two reasons for this: 1. the fact that a move consists of 4 steps and 2. the absence of “long shooting” pieces. This longterm planning is a huge weapon in the hands of the humans who can beat computers with systematic cumulation of little strategic advantages. http://media.photobucket.com/image/human%20thinking/VedaSun/Mind-1.jpg

27. Why this is hard (5/6) Source: “ Methods of MCTS and the game Arimaa” by Tom´aˇs Kozelek (Dec 2009) Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University in Prague Opening Initial positioning of pieces is not prescribed which virtually makes opening books obsolete. It has not been agreed on yet which opening setup is the best (or if there exists such a concept at all).

28. Why this is hard (6/6) Source: “ Methods of MCTS and the game Arimaa” by Tom´aˇs Kozelek (Dec 2009) Department of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University in Prague No endgame While in chess or Go the position usually gets simpler when approaching the end of the game, this might well not be the case in Arimaa where most of the games are decided in the late middle game.

30. Current Status(1/) Challenge history: To see more you can visit: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa Current Status

35. How I can participate (3/4) 9. Go to http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/ , download and install Perl. 10. Write click on the ‘bot’ file and run with Perl Interpreter (You can also run it from command Panel by “perl bot”. 11. The bot will then log into the www.arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom and will wait for somebody to play with. 12. Now log in at www.arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom with your own account and you will find your bot is waiting to play a game. 13. Click on the “sit” and start to play a game with this bot.

36. How I can participate (2/)

38. How We can participate (1/2) If few of us feel to do something we can 1. build a bot to play games. 2. participate in Arimaa Computer World Championship. 3. take a chance to win the challenge 2020. bot_kazarimaa??

39. How We can participate (2/2) (In future)

41. Conclusion Intent of the challenge: The main intent of the Arimaa challenge is to promote research in AI , which can help to advance the field and potentially have applications in other areas. Some areas of AI that would be involved depending on the approach taken include pattern recognition, machine learning, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, and expert systems . It is hoped that in the processes of achieving the Arimaa challenge some new techniques are developed in one or more of these areas that can also be applied to other problems. The Arimaa challenge is designed to be met if significant progress is made in software and not from the advances in hardware , which are almost guaranteed. As such the challenge will define the hardware and OS to be used and participants need only to develop the software. Advancing the state of the art: It is recommended that the participants (especially those with programs in the computer tournament) submit articles to the ICGA technical journal describing their research and results . If a program wins the Arimaa challenge, it must be described in a paper submitted to the ICGA technical journal after winning the challenge in order to receive any prize. http://arimaa.com/arimaa/challenge/2010/

43. Thank You. Arimaa World League 2010 http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_Arimaa_World_League Image source: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/614887/arimaa