Researchers built an AI that plays chess like a person, not a super computer.
The Maia engine doesn't necessarily play the best available move. Instead, it tries to replicate what a human would do. The AI emerged as a result of a paper co-authored by researchers from Cornell University, the University of Toronto and Microsoft.
They trained the model on individual moves from millions of online human games rather than with the sole aim of winning. Taking this approach allowed the researchers to tune Maia for different skill levels.
The researchers found Maia matched human moves within each skill level over 50% of the time, an accuracy rate higher than those of the popular chess engines Stockfish and Leela.
Cornell's Jon Kleinberg said, "Our model didn't train itself on the best move; it trained itself on what a human would do. But we had to be very careful—you have to make sure it doesn't search the tree of possible moves too thoroughly, because that would make it too good. It has to just be laser-focused on predicting what a person would do next."
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