Jeremy Bernstein

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“He Realized Trying To Get A Computer To Use Logic Was Never Going To Be As Effective As Brute Force”

January 17, 2017 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Hans Berliner, chess champ and computer scientist, just died.

Nearly two decades before Big Blue weirded out and beat down Garry Kasparov, Berliner conjured the first computer board-game champion, the backgammon whiz Gammanoid. Berliner preferred programming such machines to rely on blunt force rather than logic, a shorter if, perhaps, less revolutionary path. Those same brute methods were utilized in training Watson to become Jeopardy! champion.

Machine consciousness is, of course, the holy grail, but computers don’t need that ability to build or raze cities, to upend social orders or create a fairer system, to bring greater health or be the death of us all. And I’m firmly of the opinion that we don’t get to make sober decisions about the future of machine intelligence at every juncture. Some critical choices will be beyond out control.

Two excerpts: One from Berliner’s NYT obituary by Dylan Loeb McClain; the other from A.I., Jeremy Bernstein’s 1981 New Yorker profile of AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, which begins with a passage about Berliner.

From the New York Times:

In the early 1960s, inspired by the work of programming pioneers in artificial intelligence, Mr. Berliner, who was working at IBM at the time, began writing a program to play chess.

At 40, just after becoming world correspondence champion, Mr. Berliner entered Carnegie Mellon University to pursue a doctorate in computer science. Afterward, he joined the university’s faculty.

As he worked to create a chess computer, he realized that the approach he had previously used, trying to get a computer to use logic, was never going to be as effective as brute force — having the computer analyze as many moves as possible. The problem was that the number of possible moves in a chess game is estimated to be the same as the number of atoms in the universe. How could a computer tackle such a task?

He decided to look for a solution by programming a computer to play what he thought was a simpler game: backgammon. But that was also incredibly complex. There were about 60 possible moves at any one time and 21 possible results from the roll of the dice.

He designed a program that played well up to a point, but invariably something would go wrong. He analyzed the problem and discovered the computer made mistakes when the situation in the game began to change — for example, the computer went from having a clearly better position to one in which the outcome was in doubt — and the program failed to adjust its strategy. He applied fuzzy set theory to allow the program to make estimates of possible outcomes, and that worked.

In July 1979, the newly redesigned program, called BKG 9.8, played and won a match, 7-1, against Luigi Villa, the reigning world backgammon champion. Mr. Berliner’s program thus became the first to defeat a world champion at any board game, though he acknowledged that the program had better dice rolls than Mr. Villa throughout the match.

Mr. Berliner returned to building a chess computer, working with some of his students, including [Carl] Ebeling, who went on to become one of the country’s best-known computer experts, and Murray Campbell, who was later part of the team that designed and built Deep Blue, the computer that beat Garry Kasparov, the reigning champion, in 1997.

From the New Yorker:

In July of 1979, a computer program called BKG 9.8–the creation of Hans Berliner, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh–played the winner of the world backgammon championship in Monte Carlo. The program was run on a large computer at Carnegie-Mellon that was connected by satellite to a robot in Monte Carlo. The robot, named Gammonoid, had a visual-display backgammon board on its chest, which exhibited its moves and those of its opponent, Luigi Villa, of Italy, who by beating all his human challengers a short while before had won the right to play against the Gammonoid. The stakes were five thousand dollars, winner take all, and the computer won, seven games to one. It had been expected to lose. In a recent Scientific American article, Berliner wrote:

Not much was expected of the programmed robot…. Although the organizers had made Gammonoid the symbol of the tournament by putting a picture of it on their literature and little robot figures on the trophies, the players knew the existing microprocessors could not give them a good game. Why should the robot be any different?

This view was reinforced at the opening ceremonies in the Summer Sports Palace in Monaco. At one point the overhead lights dimmed, the orchestra began playing the theme of the film Star Wars, and a spotlight focused on an opening in the stage curtain through which Gammonoid was supposed to propel itself onto the stage. To my dismay the robot got entangled and its appearance was delayed for five minutes.

This was one of the few mistakes the robot made. Backgammon is now the first board or card game with, in effect, a machine world champion. Checkers, chess, go, and the rest will follow–and quite possibly soon. But what does that mean for us, for our sense of uniqueness and worth–especially as machines evolve whose output we can less distinguish from our own?•

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“I Had Few Intellectual Interests As A Child”

March 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

It’s not at all surprising that Stanley Kubrick was an early adopter of home audio recorders and had scads of them back during the 1960s. Last year, I posted two items from the New Yorker of that era (here and here) in which Jeremy Bernstein visited the director during the long gestation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Via Open Culture, here’s a 1966 audio recording from those interview sessions that were made not by the journalist, who didn’t even work with a tape machine at that point, but by the auteur.

From Bernstein’s notes about how he came to know fellow chess enthusiast Kubrick:

“I met Kubrick soon after Dr. Strangelove opened in 1964. I had just started writing for the New Yorker when its editor William Shawn asked me if I would consider a piece about science fiction. I never much liked science fiction but said I would look into it. My friend and colleague Gerald Feinberg, a physics professor at Columbia and a great science fiction fan, recommended Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke was not very well known then, but I set about reading everything he had written and found that I liked it a great deal. I wrote an enthusiastic article, and soon after it appeared I got a note from Clarke saying he was coming to New York from Ceylon (as it then was), where he lived, and would like to have lunch. In the course of lunch I asked him what he was doing. He said he was working with Kubrick on a ‘son of Strangelove.‘ I had no idea what he was talking about, but he said he would introduce me to Kubrick. So we went to Kubrick’s large apartment on Central Park West. I had never met a film director and had no idea what to expect. When I first saw Kubrick and the apartment, I said to myself: ‘He is one of ours.’ What I meant was that he looked and acted like almost every eccentric physicist I had ever known. The apartment was in chaos. Children and dogs were running all over the place. Papers hid most of the furniture. He said that he and Clarke were doing a science fiction film, an odyssey, a space odyssey. It didn’t have a title.

When I looked at my watch and saw that I had to go, Kubrick asked me why. I explained that I had a date to play chess for money in Washington Square Park, with a Haitian chess hustler named Duval who called himself ‘the master.’ I was absolutely floored when Kubrick said: ‘Duval is a potzer.’ It showed a level of real familiarity with the Washington Square Park chess scene. He and I ought to play, he said, and indeed we did – during the entire filming of 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

 

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“Out Here Among The Stars Lies The Destiny Of Mankind”

January 29, 2014 in Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Well, this is fun. Introduced by Vernon Myers, the publisher of Look, the 1966 short film, “A Look Behind the Future,” focuses on the magazine’s former photographer Stanley Kubrick, who was in the process of making 2001: A Space Odyssey at London’s MGM studios. It’s a nice companion piece to Jeremy Bernstein’s two great New Yorker articles about the movie during its long gestation (here and here).

Mentioned or seen in this video: Mobile phones, laptop computers, Wernher Von Braun, memory helmets, a 38-ton centrifuge, Arthur C. Clarke at the Long Island warehouse where the NASA L.E.M. (Lunar Excursion Module) was being constructed, Keir Dullea meeting the press, etc. 

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“Backgammon Is Now The First Board Or Card Game With, In Effect, A Machine World Champion”

July 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

For some reason, the editors of the New Yorker never ask me for advice. I don’t know what they’re thinking. I would tell them this if they did: Publish an e-book of the greatest technology journalism in the magazine’s history. Have one of your most tech-friendly writers compose an introduction and include Lillian Ross’ 1970 piece about the first home-video recorder, Malcolm Ross’ 1931 look inside Bell Labs, Anthony Hiss’ 1977 story about the personal computer, Hiss’ 1975 article about visiting Philip K. Dick in Los Angeles, and Jeremy Bernstein’s short 1965 piece and long 1966 one about Stanley Kubrick making 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Another inclusion could be A.I., Bernstein’s 1981 profile of the great artificial-intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky. (It’s gated, so you need a subscription to read it.) The opening:

In July of 1979, a computer program called BKG 9.8–the creation of Hans Berliner, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh–played the winner of the world backgammon championship in Monte Carlo. The program was run on a large computer at Carnegie-Mellon that was connected by satellite to a robot in Monte Carlo. The robot, named Gammonoid, had a visual-display backgammon board on its chest, which exhibited its moves and those of its opponent, Luigi Villa, of Italy, who by beating all his human challengers a short while before had won the right to play against the Gammonoid. The stakes were five thousand dollars, winner take all, and the computer won, seven games to one. It had been expected to lose. In a recent Scientific American article, Berliner wrote:

Not much was expected of the programmed robot…. Although the organizers had made Gammonoid the symbol of the tournament by putting a picture of it on their literature and little robot figures on the trophies, the players knew the existing microprocessors could not give them a good game. Why should the robot be any different?

This view was reinforced at the opening ceremonies in the Summer Sports Palace in Monaco. At one point the overhead lights dimmed, the orchestra began playing the theme of the film Star Wars, and a spotlight focused on an opening in the stage curtain through which Gammonoid was supposed to propel itself onto the stage. To my dismay the robot got entangled and its appearance was delayed for five minutes.

This was one of the few mistakes the robot made. Backgammon is now the first board or card game with, in effect, a machine world champion. Checkers, chess, go, and the rest will follow–and quite possibly soon. But what does that mean for us, for our sense of uniqueness and worth–especially as machines evolve whose output we can less distinguish from our own?•

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“He Is, In A Sense, Trying To Second-Guess The Future”

October 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

I posted a brief Jeremy Bernstein New Yorker piece about Stanley Kubrick that was penned in 1965 during the elongated production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The following year the same writer turned out a much longer profile for the same magazine about the director and his sci-fi masterpiece. Among many other interesting facts, it mentions that MIT AI legend Marvin Minsky, who’s appeared on this blog many times, was a technical consultant for the film. An excerpt from “How About a Little Game?” (subscription required):

By the time the film appears, early next year, Kubrick estimates that he and [Arthur C.] Clarke will have put in an average of four hours a day, six days a week, on the writing of the script. (This works out to about twenty-four hundred hours of writing for two hours and forty minutes of film.) Even during the actual shooting of the film, Kubrick spends every free moment reworking the scenario. He has an extra office set up in a blue trailer that was once Deborah Kerr’s dressing room, and when shooting is going on, he has it wheeled onto the set, to give him a certain amount of privacy for writing. He frequently gets ideas for dialogue from his actors, and when he likes an idea he puts it in. (Peter Sellers, he says, contributed some wonderful bits of humor for Dr. Strangelove.)

In addition to writing and directing, Kubrick supervises every aspect of his films, from selecting costumes to choosing incidental music. In making 2001, he is, in a sense, trying to second-guess the future. Scientists planning long-range space projects can ignore such questions as what sort of hats rocket-ship hostesses will wear when space travel becomes common (in 2001 the hats have padding in them to cushion any collisions with the ceiling that weightlessness might cause), and what sort of voices computers will have if, as many experts feel is certain, they learn to talk and to respond to voice commands (there is a talking computer in 2001 that arranges for the astronauts’ meals, gives them medical treatments, and even plays chess with them during a long space mission to Jupiter–‘Maybe it ought to sound like Jackie Mason,’ Kubrick once said), and what kind of time will be kept aboard a spaceship (Kubrick chose Eastern Standard, for the convenience of communicating with Washington). In the sort of planning that NASA does, such matters can be dealt with as they come up, but in a movie everything is visible and explicit, and questions like this must be answered in detail. To help him find the answers, Kubrick has assembled around him a group of thirty-five artists and designers, more than twenty-five special effects people, and a staff of scientific advisers. By the time this picture is done, Kubrick figures that he will have consulted with people from a generous sampling of the leading aeronautical companies in the United States and Europe, not to mention innumerable scientific and industrial firms. One consultant, for instance, was Professor Marvin Minsky, of M.I.T., who is a leading authority on artificial intelligence and the construction of automata. (He is now building a robot at M.I.T. that can catch a ball.) Kubrick wanted to learn from him whether any of the things he was planning to have his computers do were likely to be realized by the year 2001; he was pleased to find out that they were.•

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“For The Greeks The Vast Stretches Of The Sea Must Have Had The Same Sort Of Mystery And Remoteness That Space Has For Our Generation”

October 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Before 2001: A Space Odyssey became screen legend in 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke struggled forever to complete the project that was originally entitled, Journey Beyond the Stars. From a 1965 “Talk of the Town” piece by Jeremy Bernstein in the New Yorker (subscription required) about the work-in-progress three years before its release:

Our briefing session took place in the living room of Mr. Kubrick’s apartment. When we got there, Mr. Kubrick was talking on a telephone in the next room, Mr. Clarke had not yet arrived, and three lively Kubrick daughters–the eldest is eleven–were running in and out with several young friends. We settled ourselves in a large chair, and a few minuted later the doorbell rang. One of the little girls went to the door and asked, ‘Who is it?’ A pleasantly English-accented voice answered, through the door, “It’s Clarke,” and the girls began jumping up and down and saying, “It’s Clark Kent!”-a reference to another well-known science-fiction personality. They opened the door, and in walked Mr. Clarke, a cheerful-looking man in his forties. He was carrying several manila envelopes, which, it turned out, contained parts of Journey Beyond the Stars. Mr. Kubrick then came into the room carrying a thick pile of diagrams and charts, and looking like the popular conception of a nuclear physicist who has been interrupted in the middle of some difficult calculations. Mr. Kubrick and Mr. Clarke sat down side by side on a sofa, and we asked them about their joint venture.

Mr. Clarke said that one of the basic problems they’ve had to deal with is how to describe what they are trying to do. “Science-fiction films have always meant monsters and sex, so we have tried to find another term for our film,” said Mr. C.

“About the best we’ve been able to come up with is a space Odyssey–comparable in some ways to Homer’s Odyssey,” said Mr. K. ‘It occurred to us that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation, and that the far-flung islands Homer’s wonderful characters visited were no less remote to them that the planets our spacemen will soon be landing on are to us. Journey also shares with the Odyssey a concern for wandering, and adventure.”•

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“He Would Arrive At A Place And Announce, ‘My Brain Is Open,’ Then Proceed To Collaborate With Any And Every Mathematician”

February 13, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"He was a kind of mathematical troubadour." (Image by Kmhkmh.)

Even in a field marked by eccentricity, mathematician Paul Erdös was an odd number. The Hungarian published more papers than any other mathematician in history, even though he never really had an official post or a home or any money. He just traveled around the world, crashed with an array of academics and worked on seemingly unsolvable problems. He hardly slept or ate. This peripatetic pattern and self-abnegation continued until his death in 1996. An excerpt from Jeremy Bernstein’s 1998 Atlantic essay, which meditates on Paul Hoffman’s biography about the monomaniacal human computer, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers:

“Around 1950, when I was an undergraduate in mathematics at Harvard, my tutor George Mackey remarked that he was having a visitation from Paul Erdös.

I had never heard of Erdös (the correct pronunciation seems to have been ‘air-dish’ although I always used ‘air-dosh’), but Mackey explained that he was a kind of mathematical troubadour. He had no actual position — not because he was not offered them, but because they would interfere with his modus operandi.

Erdös migrated rapidly among 25 or so countries. He carried all his belongings in one small suitcase and a shopping bag, the greater part of which was filled with his mathematical papers and notebooks. He had no interest in clothes and even less in money. He needed three or four hours of sleep. He would arrive at a place and announce, ‘My brain is open,’ then proceed to collaborate with any and every mathematician who could keep up with him.

His collection of interesting unsolved problems in almost every field of mathematics, but especially in the theory of numbers where he probably did his most enduring work, seemed inexhaustible. What was exhaustible was the stamina of the mathematicians he landed on. Erdös would knock at a colleague’s door. ‘Hello’ he’d begin. ‘Let n be prime and letf(n) be defined as…’ After a few days of this, friends would be ready for a vacation.”

Paul Erdös tells an anecdote about a mathematician even odder than himself:

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