Claude ShannonChess Automation
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[ Claude Shannon [1] Claude Elwood Shannon, (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001)
was an American electrical engineer, mathematician and researcher from MIT and since 1941 Bell Laboratories. One of the pioneers of the information theory .
In 1949 Shannon published a groundbreaking paper on computer chess entitled Programming a Computer for Playing Chess [2] . It describes how a machine or computer could be made to play a reasonable game of chess. His process for having the computer decide on which move to make is a minimax procedure, based on an evaluation function of a given chess position.
Photos
Chess Automation
Quote of the text on the back on the photo, as given in ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4: [3] :
Computer pioneer Claude Shannon and chess champion
Edward Lasker at
MIT, ponder the
computational aspects of playing chess at Shannon’s early
relay-based chess machine [4]
WCCC 1980
WCCC 1980, Linz, Austria, Special guest Claude Shannon, David Levy left [5]
Chess pioneers in
Sacher Hotel Vienna, Austria 1980:
Ben Mittman,
Monty Newborn,
Tony Marsland,
Dave Slate,
David Levy, Claude Shannon,
Ken Thompson, Betty Shannon,
Tom Truscott [6]
WCCC 1989
Thompson, Shannon, and Slate at the 6th WCCC Edmonton 1989 [7]
Claude Shannon awards Feng-hsiung Hsu, first prize for Deep Thought, Edmonton 1989 [8]
Shannon’s Types
Claude Shannon categorized two types of search [9] :
- Type A - a brute-force search looking at every variation to a given depth
- Type B - a selective search looking at “important” branches only
Without the sense of alpha-beta, and inspired by the experiments of Adriaan de Groot [10] , Shannon and early programmers favored Type B strategy. Type B searches use some type of static heuristics in order to only look at branches that look important - with some risk to oversee some serious tactics not covered by the plausible move selector. Type B was most popular until the 1970’s, when Type A programs had enough processing power and more efficient brute force algorithms to become stronger. Today most programs are closer to Type A, but have some characteristics of a Type B as mentioned in selectivity.
See also
Selected Publications
1938 …
- Claude Shannon (1938). A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits. Transactions of the AIEE, Vol. 57, No 12, Master’s thesis 1940, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Claude Shannon (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. pdf
- Claude Shannon (1949). Programming a Computer for Playing Chess. download pdf from The Computer History Museum
1950 …
- Claude Shannon (1950). A Chess-Playing Machine. Scientific American, Vol. 182 (No. 2, February 1950), pp. 48-51. Reprinted in The World of Mathematics, edited by James R. Newman, Simon & Schuster, NY, Vol. 4, 1956, pp. 2124-2133. Included in Part B
- Claude Shannon (1953). Computers and Automata. Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers Vol. 41, No. 10 [11] [12] [13]
- John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, Claude Shannon (1955). A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.
- Claude Shannon, John McCarthy (eds.) (1956). Automata Studies. Annals of Mathematics Studies Number 34, Google books, oldcomputerbooks.com
1980 …
- Jaap van den Herik (1989). An Interview with Claude Shannon, September 25, 1980 in Linz, Austria. ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4
- Bob Herschberg, Jaap van den Herik (1989). Thank You, Dr. Shannon. ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4
- Neil J. A. Sloane, Aaron D. Wyner (1993). Claude Shannon: Collected Papers. IEEE Press, ISBN 0-7803-0434-9
2000 …
- Ken Thompson (2001). CLAUDE SHANNON (1916-2001): FUNDAMENTAL CONTRIBUTIONS. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1
- Jaap van den Herik (2001). CLAUDE SHANNON (1916-2001): THANK YOU. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1
- Ben Mittman (2001). OBITUARY CLAUDE SHANNON (1916 – 2001): PERSONAL MEMORIES. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 2
- David Mindell, Jérôme Segal, Slava Gerovitch (2003). Cybernetics and Information Theory in the United States, France and the Soviet Union. in Mark Walker (ed.) (2003). Science and Ideology: A Comparative History. Routledge » Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, covers the 1951 Paris Cybernetic Congress
- Pamela McCorduck (2004). Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence. A. K. Peters (25th anniversary edition)
Forum Posts
- One hundred years ago by Steven Edwards, CCC, April 30, 2016
External Links
- Claude Shannon from Wikipedia
- Claude Elwood Shannon - Wikiquote
- The Mathematics Genealogy Project - Claude Shannon
- Details for Claude Shannon - Oberwolfach Photo Collection
- Ars Electronica - Codes & Clowns (2010/2011) – Flickr
- Shannon entropy from Wikipedia
- Shannon’s source coding theorem from Wikipedia
- Shannon index from Wikipedia
- Shannon number from Wikipedia
- Shannon switching game from Wikipedia
- Remembering Claude Shannon (pdf)
Videos
Claude Shannon - Father of the Information Age, YouTube Video
Claude Shannon demonstrates “Theseus” Machine Learning @ Bell Labs, YouTube Video
100th Birthday
- Claude E. Shannon 100th Birthday Celebration — Information Theory Society, IEEE
- Der Erfinder der Information | HNF Blog, April 29, 2016, Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (German)
References
- ↑ Claude Shannon from Wikipedia
- ↑ Programming a Computer for Playing Chess (raw text)
- ↑ Photo of courtesy of Mrs. Shannon and Jos Uiterwijk, ICCA Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 217. Quote of the text on the back on the photo
- ↑ Shannon and Lasker at Shannon’s chess machine, ca. 1950 Gift of Monroe Newborn from The Computer History Museum
- ↑ Claude Shannon during the 3rd World Computer Chess Championship that was staged in the course of the Ars Electronica Festival 1980, credit: LIVA – Linzer Veranstaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Ars Electronica - Codes & Clowns (2010/2011) – Flickr
- ↑ Chess pioneers in Sacher Hotel Vienna, Austria, Gift of Benjamin Mittman, The Computer History Museum
- ↑ Thompson, Shannon, and Slate Photo by Monroe Newborn from A History of Computer Chess from The Computer History Museum
- ↑ Claude Shannon awards Feng-hsiung Hsu Photo from A History of Computer Chess from The Computer History Museum
- ↑ Claude Shannon (1949). Programming a Computer for Playing Chess. download pdf
- ↑ Groot, A.D. de (1946). Het denken van den Schaker, een experimenteel-psychologische studie. Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam; N.V. Noord-Hollandse Uitgevers Maatschappij, Amsterdam. Translated with the help of George Baylor, with additions (in 1965) as Thought and Choice in Chess. Mouton Publishers, The Hague. ISBN 90-279-7914-6. ( amazon)
- ↑ In Vadim Anshelevich (2002). A hierarchical approach to computer Hex. Artificial Intelligence - Chips challenging champions: games, computers and Artificial Intelligence, pdf, Vadim Anshelevich acknowledged Claude Shannon, who build an analogue Hex-playing machine using electrical resistor circuits, which was model in Anshelevich’s program Hexy
- ↑ Hex is a special case of the Shannon Switching Game, from Jack van Rijswijck (2003). Search and evaluation in Hex. Technical report, University of Alberta, pdf
- ↑ Thomas Fischer (2009). Bridg-It – Beating Shannon’s Analog Heuristic. pdf