Magnus Carlsen can do things on a chessboard that no one else in the world can, and on September 5, he changed the chess world with a move that no one saw coming.

It began with a single tweet.

Ive withdrawn from the tournament. Ive always enjoyed playing in the @STLChessClub, and hope to be back in the future, the world champion wrote. Those words were accompanied by a well-known video of soccer coach Jos Mourinho saying, If I speak, I am in big trouble.

While Carlsen didnt speak publicly for three weeks, his implication was clear: He believed that when 19-year-old grandmaster Hans Niemann beat him the day before at the prestigious Sinquefield Cup, ending Carlsens undefeated streak in classical chess at 53 games, that he had cheated with computer assistance.

As good as Carlsen is and hes probably the best in human history hes no match for Stockfish and other chess computers, commonly referred to as chess engines, which can calculate dozens of moves into the future. Its unclear if and how Niemann could have received recommendations from an assistant watching the live streamed games players cannot have phones or other communication devices on them while they play but if he had some kind of concealed device, beating the world champion would be easy enough.

After Carlsens withdrawal, the Sinquefield Cup introduced extra security measures for subsequent rounds, namely a 15-minute delay between the games and the livestream broadcast.

While players were already routinely wanded with a metal detector on entry, Niemann, was subject to an especially deliberate check, which took a minute-and-a-half.

Niemann sat for routine post-game interviews after his match against Carlsen and the following one, a draw against fellow 19-year-old grandmaster Alireza Firouzja. Following both, he was criticized by other grandmasters for missing key aspects of the games he had just played, suggesting to some that he hadnt really been thinking about the moves he made. Carlsen later claimed that Niemann didnt seem to be focusing very hard at key moments.

Still, no one has found conclusive evidence that he cheated, and Niemann, while admitting to isolated incidents of cheating in online games, maintains that he has never cheated in an in-person match.

Carlsens decision the first time he had ever dropped out of a tournament that he had already started resulted from years of rising stakes in the chess world and growing mistrust with this particular opponent.

This centuries-old game is seeing unprecedented numbers of players and the biggest prize pools in history. Twitch and other live platforms present a new revenue stream, particularly for young stars like Niemann.

With more people interested in playing, watching, and improving at the game, theres more to gain from making a name in chess.

The major online chess platforms make huge investments in catching cheaters.

Seventy percent of the bans [from the site] are automated, Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest told me. If somebodys playing blitz [in which players typically have three to five minutes to think during their moves for the entire game] better than Magnus Carlsen plays in classical chess [in which each player gets several hours], you know, theres a problem.

Algorithms can easily root out players who are simply doing what a chess engine recommends, and strong players can often sniff out cheaters just from the strength and style of their play. Since the start of 2021, Chess.com has closed roughly 18,000 to 35,000 accounts for cheating each month. The site has banned Niemann in the past, and more than 100 other grandmasters, many of whom were allowed to come back after admitting to cheating.

Cheat detection is far and away the number one investment of man hours in Lichess, and I would bet the other servers use a similarly large amount of resources, said Lichess community organizer Chris Callahan.

The room to navigate for cheaters gets a little larger when one considers that both Chess.com and Lichess are terrified of accusing someone innocent.

You dont want to be wrong even one in a thousand times, said Allebest.

The consequences for famous players are clear, said Callahan. They stop getting invitations to tournaments, their colleagues look at them as cheaters, it stops all these professional possibilities. Theyre going to have the crimson letter on their jacket for the rest of their life. But even amateur players suffer consequences because they have friends, they have connections in the real world.

Because of the huge numbers of games being monitored over 400 million per month on Chess.com a tiny imperfection in the detection system could result in thousands of innocent players getting flagged.

That leads to the question of what a chess platform does when it identifies a cheater.

Chess.com has always handled incidents of cheating privately, they are considering adjustments to that policy.

We may internally decide to be more public about that stuff going forward, said Allebest, while maintaining that the company will keep its options open.

The issue is also a live one in the world of poker, which went through a similar scandal in September in which a revered player, Garrett Adelstein, accused poker newcomer Robbi Jade Lew of cheating in an individual hand in which she won $269,000, perhaps through receiving information about other players cards from a third-party with access to the games live stream.

While poker professional Bart Hanson is 50-50 on whether Lew did in fact cheat, he said that computer assistance is a real threat in online poker.

You almost cant play nowadays online for any serious money, said Hanson, due to programs that can provide optimal strategies in real-time. He added that online poker is illegal in most U.S. states and that the offshore sites people use have no interest in really cracking down on this stuff.

Some players simply use bots to play for them.

Hanson said that direct cheating in casinos is generally not much of a concern, but collusion, in which two players adjust their strategy so that they both get an edge against the rest of the table, can be a factor. Even murkier is the issue of staking, in which players spread their risk by buying a percentage of each others winnings.

Lets say I have a 50% [stake] in you [in a tournament], Hanson said, and we both make the final table. Shouldnt I have to divulge that to everybody at the table? Wont that affect the way that I play? But its one of these things thats almost impossible to enforce. All these deals are somewhat secret.

Chess.com just wrapped up its first Global Championship, which carried a $1 million prize pool. The company hired security professionals who do embassy sweeps and boardrooms, per Allebest. If theres a device on the body, theyll find it.

Niemann, however, was disinvited, following the accusation by Carlsen. It was an awkward move for Chess.com, given that the company acquired Carlsens Play Magnus venture for $82.9 million in August, but it was one that Allebest felt was justified, especially given that the site had caught Niemann cheating multiple times online.

We were days away from having our biggest prize money event in history, and Magnus did the biggest, loudest, most unprecedented thing in chess history to say something, he explained. Given the sites history with Niemann and potential concerns from other players, I think its understandable that we just hit the reset button.

Neither cheating case is clear cut, but both have shined a light on an awkward truth in both chess and poker: Its the greedy cheaters that get caught.

If I knew everyones cards, I can guarantee that you wouldnt catch me cheating, because I would intentionally make mistakes, said Hanson. I would only need to make a few decisions that are 50-50 the right way each session to be a huge winner.

Similarly in chess, there is broad consensus that it is nearly impossible to catch someone who limits computer assistance to a small percentage of games and only a few moves in those games.

Unless you see them do it, theres no way, said Allebest.

The Chess.com Global Championship, a rapid-style event in which players get 10 minutes to make their moves, highlighted both the top chess talent in the world and some of its most notable commentators, with the company recruiting many of the most popular chess streamers to provide live analysis.

Chess.com is investing in the game to try to turn chess players into chess fans. Part of that means leaning into faster formats, which tend to be more exciting for viewers and players.

Lets get chess on an ESPN sub-channel, said Allebest. Lets get chess in sports bars. Live streamed tournaments are currently shown on sites such as Chess.com and Chess24.com, or platforms such as YouTube.

He mentioned the poker pocket cam that shows players cards as the innovation that made the game an accessible television product.

Whats our pocket cam? Its not just the eval bar [which shows the computer assessment of who is winning]. We have a lot of cool things coming.

That will involve weaving the stories of the players, their abilities, and rivalries into narratives that make an ancient game into high drama. This time, preferably without the scandal.

More:

How a Huge Cheating Scandal Altered the Chess World - Front Office Sports

Over the past decade, the US has been complaining about the amount of power which the BRIC group, and specifically China, has on the global economy. BRIC stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China; these were the worlds fastest growing economies. Only in the past 10 months, the US has turned their attention toward OPEC due to the prices of fuel. Nevertheless, China seems to have a strong influence even over the price of crude oil.

Over the past 2-weeks, crude oil prices have declined by 12.8% and this week to an 11-month low. So why has the price significantly declined after strong price increases in October?

Chinas Supreme Reign over Oil Demand

One of oils main price influences is, without doubt, China. It is the largest economy in the world and the largest purchaser of crude oil alongside the US. China actually consumes 14% of the worlds oil this is 5 times more than Germany and 8 times more than the UK. For this reason, if news develops in China, it can rock the entire oil market.

In addition to this, China is also one of the largest exporters of raw materials. Therefore an economic decline in the Chinese economy, or worse a lockdown, can have a very strong impact on the global economy and supply chains. A potential decline in the price of crude oil is yet another consequence.

The amount of COVID-19 cases in the region is the main concern at the moment. Such numbers have previously resulted in the government placing full lockdowns. COVID-19 cases in China have reached over 55,000 per day and recorded their first deaths since September.

These developments have resulted in most market participants believing that the level of demand is likely to decline. In fact, a decline has already been seen due to the increased level of restrictions placed by the Chinese government. However, the demand will definitely drop sharply if cities fall into full lockdowns.

In addition to the above, the price of crude oil has also been pressured by the decline in economic activity. For the first time this year, the PMI figures for the UK, EU and US have all dropped into the contraction zone. The same can be said of the GDP figures which have declined for all economies. Consumer demand has remained high according to many reports such as Retail Sales figures. However, in spite of that, if economic activity continues to decline it can lead to further pressure on oil prices.

Nonetheless, traders should note that the decline cannot be certain. Traders should be cautious of opposing factors. For example, a weakening US Dollar is known to support the prices of crude oil. This is because it becomes cheaper for foreign buyers due to the altered exchange rate. Although such a situation could support prices, we have not witnessed it this time around. Oil prices have fallen despite the US Dollar Index having declined by almost 6.5%.

Another issue for the price of crude oil is a potential oil price cap being placed on Russian oil. The European Union and G7 members are currently in the middle of these negotiations. The issue with the planned restrictions on Russian oil is that, of course, Russia will not agree to it. In fact, the country has advised that it will halt all supply. This is an issue as Russia is the second largest global supplier of crude oil. However, the effect on the market will depend on how low the price cap will be.

Will OPEC Intervene Again?

OPEC have not been shy in making their opinion on pricing known. On many occasions, the group has repeatedly stated that they aim for an $80 per barrel price. This is slightly higher than the current price. But the question that traders are now asking is, what will OPEC decide at their next meeting?

OPEC is due to meet in the first week of December. If they announce a production change, as they did in October, it can create high levels of volatility. Back in October, the organization had announced that they would decrease their production targets by over 1 million barrels per day, prompting a 6 week upward trend. This was in response to the price declining to $76.

In conclusion, we can see that the price of crude oil is understandably under pressure from certain elements such as global economic contraction, as well as lower demand from China. However, its vital that traders remain cautious because other factors, such as supply and OPEC, can create a change in the trend and volatility levels.

Read more from the original source:

The Game of Chess Continues - OPEC, China and the Oil Market - FinanceFeeds

Posted By: WebAdmin25th November 2022

Passionate about chess? Chess in Schools and Communities are recruiting new tutors nationwide to teach in schools, libraries and prisons. We have particular need in the following areas Leeds, Merseyside, Birmingham, Cardiff, Essex and North/East London.We run a comprehensive induction programme for new tutors, including a training course and a period spent shadowing an experienced CSC tutor. Our tutors are currently active in over 250 schools, libraries and prisons in 80 boroughs across England and Wales. Whilst it is important to have a basic knowledge of chess, we have found that having classroom experience or the ability to work with children in a classroom setting is of greater value.Paid and volunteer roles are available with flexible hours. Sign up now to become a Chess in Schools tutor at http://www.chessinschools.co.uk

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Chess in Schools and Communities are recruiting new tutors - English Chess Federation

Carrom was Shubhi Guptas first love when she was just three. Thereafter, she began playing ludo. Within a few months, she shifted her attention to chess, a common passion for her family of four, including father, mother and elder brother.

In fact, it was her father Pradeep Gupta, who introduced the family to chess. The passion is such that the family hardly watches TV or spends time on social sites.

Shubhis back-to-back international medals this year, including a gold medal in the under-12 category at the Commonwealth Youth Chess Championship in Sri Lanka this week, are a reflection of her love for the sport. The 11-year-old Shubhi, who comes from Ghaziabad, scored a perfect 9/9 in this tournament.

This September, Shubhi won the under-12 title at the World Cadet Chess Championship at Batumi, Georgia.

That was my first big event after winning the national title in April this year, so I made sure that I should go back home with a medal and it happened according to my plan, Shubhi said.

I never tried any other sport than carrom, ludo and a bit of table tennis before opting for chess. I love solving puzzles, said Shubhi who also had three silver medals in standard, rapid and blitz categories at the Western Asian Youth Chess Championship at Maldives this June.

Shubhi, who won the National Amateur U-2000 Women Chess Championship in May 2022, after capturing a bronze in the in Sub-Junior Chess Championship in March, also won a silver medal at the Asian Schools Chess Championship in U-11 category at the Philippines in July 2021.

I havent watched TV for two years and I am focussing only on chess. It is the only thing on my mind right now. I am aiming for the womens GM norms in three years' time from now as the titles in the Worlds and Commonwealth Youth events have boosted my confidence, said Shubhi, who is being trained by Prasenjit Dutta.

Shubhi's mother, Urmila Gupta, travels with her to as many events as she can across the world.

She (Urmila) learnt chess only after getting married to me and thereafter the sport became the biggest love of the family. Now, Urmila teaches Shubhi about the game when she travels with her for events, said Pradeep.

In fact, during the lockdown, Shubhi trained by playing against all of us at home. We all play chess at home and only recently I have given mobile phones to my kids. Otherwise, they had chess as the only entertainment, Gupta said.

He describes Shubhi as calm and composed. She (Shubhi) always remains calm and composed and thats her strength in sport. At the start of her career, she looked a bit hassled, but as time progressed, she gained maturity in her game, and now she is altogether a different player, Pradeep added.

Sharad Deep is a versatile sports journalist, who loves writing on cricket and Olympic sport. He has played cricket at the university level and has been writing for Hindustan Times since 1997....view detail

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Chess, the only pastime for Shubhi and her family - Hindustan Times

Both Messi and Ronaldo, however, may end up breaking the lone eggs record collectively but to the eggs credit, it never had the marketing push and budget that the chess picture with the two of footballs biggest superstars had.

While paid marketing and the scale of both Ronaldo and Messis popularity did play a big part in the astonishing number of likes the picture has received till now, the timing and content also struck a chord with the fans.

The picture, already being dubbed iconic by many, has made fans of both players set aside their fiery Messi-Ronaldo rivalry debates on social media to appreciate the candid frame of the two together.

The upcoming FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar is expected to be the last dance for both the greats and will mark the end of an era, where fans had the opportunity to watch two of the best footballers of all time go head-to-head for records, trophies and various personal honours, week in and week out.

Furthermore, images of both players together, outside of football matches and award ceremonies, are rare.

Additionally, fans have also started to spot a few unconfirmed easter eggs in the picture, which have added to the excitement around the Messi-Ronaldo chess photo.

Fans have dug up pictures from the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia where a Louis Vuitton briefcase was used to present the FIFA World Cup trophy ahead of the opening fixture and the final in Moscow. It resembles the trunk on which Ronaldo and Messi are playing chess on and the picture is a symbolic representation of the battle to ensue, according to some.

Read this article:

Messi and Ronaldo chess picture: Why it went big on Instagram - Olympics

Australian-based VADR Media has announced that its esports-first chess-focused tournament and broadcast platform Checkmate.live has entered into an exclusive long-term partnership with the Arab Esports Federation (ARESF). The strategic partnership sees Checkmate become the Arab Esports Federations official online chess platform, data and broadcast partner.

In September, Checkmate also announced a similar partnership with the Asian Chess Federation, which membership consists of 52 national Chess Federations across Asia, the Middle East and Oceania. Both international partnerships further expand Checkmates reach across Asia, Oceania, the Middle East and Africa.

Read: The Asian Chess Federation, Checkmate partner to scale up online competitive chess

The partnership follows Checkmate recently opening its office in the UAE.

The Arab Esports Federation is the governing body of esports for 18 national esports associations across the Middle East and wider Arab region. The federation with its secretariat in the UAE is headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and is led by Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan.

Checkmate is an esports-first competitive chess media company focused on producing and broadcasting linear and online tournaments for a new generation of players. It is an XR-led, international esports series and a skills-based Web3 platform that provides the opportunity to compete for glory, cash, credits and in-game assets. A key feature of the platform is its proprietary AI and computer vision-based Chess anti-cheat, which utilises a players web camera to monitor online match integrity.

The Arab Esports Federation is delighted to partner with Checkmate and whole heartily supports their vision of improving the integrity of the online game and promoting it as both an esport and sport. Online chess is not a sports simulation; its a natural extension of the over-the-board game. A game that brings with it many positive benefits, including higher female participation than esports, cognitive and mental improvements for players, good sportsmanship and brand safety for stakeholders, said ARESF secretary general Hisham Al Taher.

It is estimated globally that up to 700 million people play the 1500-year-old skill-based game, with 420 million of these players being between 18-34, the same demographic that has also seen brands increasingly flock to esports.

We are honoured to partner with the Arab Esports Federation under the leadership of its president, Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud. It is often said that youth own the future, and this is very much the case in the Middle East and Gulf countries where the majority of the 420 million Arabic-speaking population is under 35 who love gaming and chess, said John McRae, managing director of VADR and Checkmate.

The Arab Esports League has been very successful amongst our members. The addition of competitive online chess as an esports series enables greater access for the wider community to participate in a structured innovative and positive experience, said Al Taher. Our strategic alliance with Checkmate allows further opportunity to celebrate the diversity of the gaming community.

Checkmates take on chess will launch in Q1 2023 on Web and Mobile.

See the rest here:

The Arab Esports Federation moves into Web3 and launches online chess platform - Gulf Business

Since chess computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, artificial intelligence has held increasing sway over humans in a handful of 'adversarial' games - those in which human interaction plays a limited role. Now, however, a group of researchers have revealed a new AI that's attempting to expand the pool of games that a computer can beat you at.

In a paper (opens in new tab) published this week, researchers unveiled Cicero, an AI trained to win games of Diplomacy, a seven-player board game in which "each turn, all players engage in [...] free-form dialogue with the others during a negotiation period" before taking an action. That discussion phase is what sets Cicero's efforts apart from other AI.

The paper states that "almost all prior AI breakthroughs" have been in "two-player zero-sum" games, in which gaining an advantage for oneself puts the other player at a direct disadvantage. In those games - Chess, StarCraft, Go, and Poker - the AI can learn optimal strategy by playing against itself in a pattern known as 'self-play'. Eventually, it will come up with an approach that can't be beaten in a balanced game. In these examples, the complexity of the game itself isn't important; what matters is that communication isn't a central game mechanic, and that each action strives to set another player back in their goal.

That's not true of Diplomacy, a game in which conversation between players is important (if not entirely crucial), and in which making a gain does not necessarily harm an opponent. Here, self-play "produced uninterpretable language." That was a major obstacle to overcome, as anonymity was key to a fair experiment. Communication between players had to be grounded in the state of the game, or events that had already occurred, and if Cicero slipped up, the likelihood was that it would be found out due to its inability to explain its mistake.

Even more important, however, was the ability to build trust with fellow players. Theoretically, that concept would be alien to Cicero, but to succeed it would need to establish "an ability to reason about the beliefs, goals, and intentions of others" as well as "an ability to persuade and build relationships through dialogue."

To establish Cicero, researchers took a dataset of more than 40,000 dialogue-driven games of Diplomacy from an online version of the game. A base dialogue model was then trained on the Diplomacy chat logs, and then trained to predict messages based on an array of game data. Eventually, Cicero was trained to "exploit" the information in a message when deciding on its next action, while also reasoning what other players might be attempting to do.

Eventually, Cicero was entered anonymously into an online league that ran from August to October, 2022. It played in 40 games, ranking in the top 10% of those who played more than once, and coming second out of 19 players that played more than five games. Overall, Cicero was the tournament winner, with an average score more than double that of some of its 82 opponents.

It might not have been complete annihilation, but it was a tournament-winning effort for an AI laying some significant groundwork for similar, future efforts. For now, it might be limited to Diplomacy, but it strikes me that similar technology to Cicero could one day make its way to games like Settlers of Catan, or even social deduction video games like Town of Salem or Among Us. Now that would be sus.

Need to get some practice in ahead of our new AI overlords? Here are the best board games out there.

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After chess and before our delicious brains, AI is coming for social strategy games and it's winning - Gamesradar

In development since 2012, Project Debater was touted as IBMs next big milestone for AI. Aimed at helping people make evidence-based decisions when the answers arent black-and-white," it doesnt just learn a topic but can debate unfamiliar topics too, as long as these are covered in the massive corpus that the system mines, which includes hundreds of millions of articles from numerous well-known newspapers and magazines. The system uses Watson Speech to Text API (application programming interface). Project Debaters underlying technologies are also being used in IBM Cloud and IBM Watson.

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Interestingly, a year later at Think 2019 in San Francisco, IBM's Project Debater lost an argument in a live, public debate with a human champion, Harish Natarajan. They were arguing for and against the resolution, We should subsidize preschool". Both sides had only 15 minutes to prepare their speech, following which they delivered a four-minute opening statement, a four-minute rebuttal, and a two-minute summary. The winner of the event was determined by Project Debater's ability to convince the audience of the persuasiveness of the arguments. But even though Natarajan was declared the winner, 58% of the audience said Project Debater "better enriched their knowledge about the topic at hand, compared to Harishs 20%" ().

Raising the bar

Meta (formerly Facebook) appears to have gone a step further. On Tuesday, it announced that CICERO is the first AI "to achieve human-level performance in the popular strategy game Diplomacy". CICERO demonstrated this by playing on webDiplomacy.net, an online version of the game, where it achieved more than double the average score of the human players and ranked in the top 10% of participants who played more than one game. Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman writer, orator, lawyer and politician all bundled in one.

Meta explains that unlike games like Chess and Go, Diplomacy requires an agent to recognize that someone is likely bluffing or that another player would see a certain move as aggressive, failing which it will lose. Likewise, it has to talk like a real person, displaying empathy, building relationships, and speaking knowledgeably about the game, failing which it won't find other players willing to work with it. To achieve these goals, Meta used both strategic reasoning as used in agents that played AlphaGo and Pluribus, and natural language processing (NLP), as used in models like GPT-3, BlenderBot 3, LaMDA, and OPT-175B.

Meta has open-sourced the code and published a paper to help the wider AI community use CICERO to "spur further progress in human-AI cooperation".

How CICERO works

CICERO continuously looks at the game board to understand and model how the other players are likely to act, following which it uses this framework to control a language model that "can generate free-form dialogue, informing other players of its plans and proposing reasonable actions for the other players that coordinate well with them". Meta started with a 2.7 billion parameter BART-like language model that is pre-trained on text from the internet and fine-tuned on over 40,000 human games on webDiplomacy.net. It also developed techniques to automatically annotate messages in the training data with corresponding planned moves in the game. The idea is to control dialogue generation while persuading other players more effectively. In short, Cicero first makes a prediction of what everyone will do; Second, it refines that prediction using planning; Third, it generates several candidate messages based on the board state, dialogue, and its intents; and fourth, it filters messages to reduce gibberish and unrelated comments.

AI-powered machines are being continuously pitted against humans in the last decade. IBMs Deep Blue supercomputing system, for instance, beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1996-97 and its Watson supercomputing system even beat Jeopardy players in 2011.

In March 2016, Alphabet-owned AI firm DeepMinds computer programme, AlphaGo, beat Go champion Lee Sedol. On 7 December 2017, AlphaZero modelled on AlphaGo took just four hours to learn all chess rules and master the game enough to defeat the worlds strongest open-source chess engine, Stockfish. The AlphaZero algorithm is a more generic version of the AlphaGo Zero algorithm. It uses reinforcement learning, which is an unsupervised training method that uses rewards and punishments. AlphaGo Zero does not need to train on human amateur and professional games to learn how to play the ancient Chinese game of Go. Further, the new version not only learnt from AlphaGo the worlds strongest player of the Chinese game Go but also defeated it in October 2017.

A year later, in July 2018, AI bots beat humans at the video game Dota 2. Published by Valve Corp., Dota 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena video game and is one of the most popular and complex e-sports games. Professionals train throughout the year to earn part of Dotas annual $40 million prize pool that is the largest of any e-sports game. Hence, a machine beating such players underscores the power of AI. AI bots, though, lost to professional players at Dota 2, which has been actively developed for over a decade, with the game logic implemented in hundreds of thousands of lines of code. This logic takes milliseconds per tick to execute, versus nanoseconds for Chess or Go engines. The game is updated about once every two weeks.

What it means for humans

The approach of IBM's Project Debater and Meta's CICERO, though, lies in the fact that they involve predicting and modeling what humans would actually do in real life. This implies that they cannot be just relying on supervised learning, where the agent is trained with labeled data such as a database of human players actions in past games. Meta explains that CICERO runs an iterative planning algorithm called piKL, which "balances dialogue consistency with rationality".

CICERO, as Meta acknowledges, is a work in progress. As of now, it only capable of playing Diplomacy. However, the underlying technology is relevant to many real-world applications, Meta suggests. "Controlling natural language generation via planning and RL (reinforcement learning), could, for example, ease communication barriers between humans and AI-powered agents. For instance, today's AI assistants excel at simple question-answering tasks, like telling you the weather, but what if they could maintain a long-term conversation with the goal of teaching you a new skill? Alternatively, imagine a video game in which the non-player characters (NPCs) could plan and converse like people do understanding your motivations and adapting the conversation accordingly to help you on your quest of storming the castle.

It's clear from these developments that this is not the last we're hearing from AI-powered machines. The game will continue, and so will mutual learning.

Elsewhere in Mint

In Opinion, Raghuram G. Rajan says deglobalisation poses a climate threat. Vivek Kaul tells the reason why Twitter can't die. Madan Sabnavis calls for caution over India's title of the fastest-growing economy. Long Story says the slowed-down motorcycle is an eloquent sign of India's downturn.

See more here:

AI now not only debates with humans but negotiates and cajoles too - Mint

The new gods are running into a bit of trouble. From the soap opera playing out at Twitter HQ, the too-big-to-fail bankruptcies in the cryptocurrency space, to mass tech layoffs, the past month has seen successive headlines declaring a litany of woes facing the bullish tech boyos in Silicon Valley and beyond.

The minute-by-minute coverage of Elon Musks escapades and the global levels of interest in the FTX collapse both go well beyond what youd expect from a business story. Im willing to gamble a few Bitcoins that the popular fixation has little to do with any particular interest in successful software engineering; rather it is the personalities who inhabit these spaces, and the philosophies that propel them in their godlike ambition. What is their end goal, we wonder. What drives them, beyond the pursuit of growth? It is easy to assume that money is all that motivates the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Musk and Jeff Bezos. Except, when you start to examine the mindsets of these men, its clear that cash is far from the whole story.

The concept of effective altruism has had its day in court after FTX, the worlds second largest cryptocurrency exchange announced that, oops, it was mysteriously short of $8bn and would be filing for bankruptcy, post haste. As the dust and fraud allegations settle, the personal guiding principles of FTXs millennial chief executive, Sam Bankman-Fried, have come to the fore. Bankman-Fried ostensibly was driven into crypto by an adherence to the effective altruism movement. Originally espousing giving as much targeted time and money to philanthropy as possible, EA has been morphed by its most prominent practitioners into getting very, very rich and then spending that money on projects that better the human race. This earn-to-give philosophy is dependent on data-driven analysis of what causes offer the best returns of betterment. Its utilitarianism with a god complex.

Since Bankman-Frieds spectacular fall from grace, it seems as if this doctrine may be doomed to the same downward spiral as its most famous disciple. Its hard to argue that you possess the best instincts to improve the prospects of the human race when you cant even keep your own affairs or billions in customer funds in order.

Then there was the allegation last week by the Insider journalist Julia Black that Musk, along with other billionaires, appear to be engaged in their own personal eugenics programme via a movement called pronatalism. Black writes that pronatalism an ideology centred on having children to reverse falling birthrates in European countries, and prevent a predicted population collapse is taking hold in wealthy tech and venture-capitalist circles, with the aid of hi-tech genetic screening.

Musk has championed pronatalist ideas publicly. Privately the Tesla co-founder is, in his own words, doing my part; he has 10 children known to the public, two of whom are twins he fathered with an AI expert who serves as an executive for his Neuralink company. But the ideas go beyond Musk and into the canyons of Silicon Valley; the worlds richest and most powerful people see it as their duty, Black claims, to replicate themselves as many times as possible.

Blacks subjects also namecheck effective altruism, longtermism (which prioritises the distant future over the concerns of today), and transhumanism (the evolution of humanity beyond current limitations via tech), as complementary philosophies. The concept of legacy is key to understanding our tech pioneers. As one interviewee tells Black, The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children. Given that Musks genius business record is one of multiple near-bankruptcies before he even arrived at Twitter, this rather undermines the theory that the future will be safe only if populated by mini-Musks.

These companies believe that in order to make visions ideas a reality, they require total control of the landscape around them. In his 2017 book World Without Mind, Franklin Foer wrote that Facebook now Meta was founded on the concept of radical transparency a belief that sharing every facet of our lives will somehow result in social good. The metaverse, in which we dont just share our lives on social media but conduct them within it, is this ideas logical conclusion. It has already lost the company $9.4bn.

Silicon Valley and its missionary outposts are dominated not only by the pursuit of growth, which is a means to an end. The underlying raison detre tying these various tech titans together is their fervour for enacting their own personal theological outlooks in supposed service of the wider world. To do this, they must dominate and monopolise remake society in their image, platform by integrated platform.

When we view these monoliths as businesses like any other, or allow them to claim global monopolies, we fail to realise that they are competing for more than our attention or our cash: they are competing for the right to dictate what our societies look like. So it matters a great deal when that vision falters, or fails altogether. Its the stuff of myth and folktale played out via forums and Wall Street Journal tip lines; the emperors slowly shedding their clothes. We are watching would-be gods shrink back to being men once more.

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The gods of Silicon Valley are falling to earth. So are their warped visions for society - The Guardian

This month, the 8 billionth child entered the world. Demographers believe that the worlds population is moving towards 10 billion. But at some point, the curve will begin to move downwards. Families will shrink. People everywhere (except sub-Saharan Africa) will become older and older, leading to huge burdens on government social services.

The problem is that most countries have birth-rates below replacement level. And no one knows how to coax women into having more children, as China has discovered, to its dismay. It moved from a one-child policy, to a two-child policy, to a three-child policy and fertility has edged even lower.

What is to be done? A solution comes from an improbable source wealthy, geeky, tech and venture-capitalist pro-natalism activists.

Chapter 1: Elon talks about it

The eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has been married twice but now describes himself as single. He has had at least nine children with a combination of wives, girlfriends, and surrogates. Here are some of his recent tweets.

Chapter 2: Malcolm and Simone do something about it

Malcolm and Simone Collins radiate powerful self-confidence. As a married couple they have operated companies on five continents that collectively pulled in US$70 million every year; raised a private equity fund; directed strategy at top, early-stage venture capital firms; written three best-selling books; served as managing director of Dialog, an elite retreat for global leaders founded by Peter Thiel; and earned degrees in neuroscience, business, and technology policy from St Andrews, Stanford, and Cambridge.

Before marrying, they committed to having between 7 and 13 children. Since Simone was older, she had to ensure that her age would not be a barrier to their plans for an expanding family. In 2018, which they call the Year of the Harvest, they produced and froze as many embryos as possible. They already have three children: Octavian, Torsten, and Titan Invictus.

The evolutionary logic associated with transhumanism is an important theme in their plans. On the population level, whole cultures are in danger of extinction like the Japanese or Armenians or Catalans. This would represent a tragic loss of cultural diversity. We are about to experience the largest cultural mass extinction since the colonial period, they write. Their Project Ark is to save as many cultures as possible by promoting higher birth rates.

On a family level, their proposals involve tinkering with embryos to ensure that their children have good genes. Their critics call this eugenics. They prefer to call it common sense. What we advocate for is fairly vanillaif aggressivetranshumanism: Improving and transforming the human condition with technology. Be against transhumanism all you want, but dont call it eugenics.

Chapter 3: Learn all about population implosion at pronatalist.org

From their home in rural Pennsylvania, this highly-connected couple is preaching the gospel of pro-natalism, the latest fad amongst the super-rich in Silicon Valley. For the past 20 or so years, billionaires have been obsessed with longevity increasing lifespans to hundreds of years. Research on that continues, but some are turning their minds to demography. The person of this subculture really sees the pathway to immortality as being through having children, says Simone.

Pronatalist.org, a website created by Malcolm and Simone, alerts readers to the crisis:

Birth rates are falling precipitously around the world in both developed and developing countries. If dramatic action is not taken, we will witness the extinction of entire societies, expansion of totalitarian governments, and an unchecked rise of tribalism.

South Koreas birth-rate is about 0.81, far below replacement level. The Collinses call this genocide by inaction. They have a knack for presenting the consequences of population decline in vivid analogies: This is equivalent to a disease that wipes out 94% of the population. We need radical solutions to save endangered ethnic groups.

They even see contemporary politics through a demographic lens:

If you have ever wondered why different ideological factions in politics seem to be able to agree on less and less as time goes on, why they are becoming more authoritarian, and why tribalism seems to be increasing: You are witnessing the invisible hand of demographic collapse at work.

Population numbers will eventually rebound within a few hundred years, but progress the world has made in terms of womens rights, freedom of speech, environmentalism, racial equality, gay rights, etc. runs the risk of systematic erasure if we fail to intervene.

Whats the answer? Only a profound cultural change will save us, they argue. Tax credits and baby bonuses are just tinkering around the edges:

Only cultures with a strong external motivation to have kids are well above repopulation rate at the moment; all others will enter the dustbin of history. Essentially, every world culture that does not have strong religious convictions or educate and treat women as equals is being systematically deleted.

A single family having eight kids that successfully passes that practice to their own children can save their entire ethnic group. (One family having eight kids for ten generations leads to over a billion descendants.)

Chapter 4: Malcolm and Simone have a survival plan

The best-known groups with high fertility are all religious. About a quarter of Israels population will be Haredi Jews by 2050, according to a recent estimate. In 1980, they were an insignificant minority of 4 percent. The American Amish may have the worlds highest birthrate; one demographer joked that in 200 years, all Americans will be Amish.

Of course, Malcolm and Simone are not conventionally religious. If pressed, they describe themselves as secular Calvinists. They are not Sunday church-goers but they are hard-working, hard-driving, abstemious, frugal souls on a mission from Evolution.

Their unconventionally religious stand is to encourage fans to create family cultures which welcome children. Were trying to create a playbook for people who want to work their values and morals into durable cultures that are far more likely to endure intergenerationally (rather than go extinct due to low birth rates), Simone explained in an email to MercatorNet. One can create a durable culture from scratch, without any religious element, or one can reinforce an existing religion or culture to make it durable (capable of lasting intergenerationally).

They have nearly finished writing another book which sketches their philosophy of the intertwined themes of demography, evolution, family structure, and religion, called The Pragmatists Guide to Crafting Religion. At its core, they write, this book is a meditation on how we can intentionally construct a culture/religion that will be evolutionarily successful and spread.

They have a Sisyphean job ahead of them. As they observe wryly: It may be easier to coax a caged panda to reproduce than it would be to convince a cosmopolitan progressive to raise their own kid.

Malcolm and Simone describe themselves as conservative Republicans, although in some ways, they are fully-paid-up progressives. They will be attending the LGBT-friendly Log Cabin Republican shindig at Mar-a-Lago in mid-December. They endorse experimental family structures, and their views on moral issues would disconcert traditional Christians.

But beneath the hipster veneer, they really are the secular Calvinists they claim to be. They are not shy of expressing stern and judgemental views about pop culture which offers sex, power, acceptance, prestige, wealth, and the life of Riley without hard work. They take a dim view of the cultural super virus which is how practicing secular Calvinist hipsters describe woke culture.

As an aside, they are nonchalant about woke lunacies. From an evolutionary perspective, they contend, bad ideas literally go extinct. That cultural super virus is a sterilizing disease and almost none of its husks reproduce above repopulation rate, hence our grandkids likely wont have to deal with them.

And on family dynamics, they are astonishingly conventional. They point out in their book that the best motivation for the next generation to have kids is a happy home life as a child:

If a young girl grows up and sees her mom and people like her overburdened, unloved, and ignored by society, why would she choose to have kids herself? Why would she aspire to that? While we cant fix this at the societal level, we can address this problem intentionally-designed cultures. If you want to create a durable culture for your family and inspire your children to have kids of their own, one of the best things you can do is ensure you have a strong relationship with your spouse.

For our family, this means ensuring daughters see their mothers glorified, appreciated, and even deified within family culture for the sacrifices they make while also demonstrating that none of those sacrifices require foregoing a career or stepping back from public life.

In some respects, they may be even sterner than their God-fearing Calvinist forebears. Child-bearing is natural for women, they write in their book. Theres no reason to exaggerate its difficulties:

In our House, having kids is just part of the yearly routine. While Simone is appreciated for it, she never hints that it would be justified for her to use pregnancy or childbirth as an excuse to step back from work. The productive glorification of motherhood requires never giving into societys tendency to conflate gratitude and approval with justification to winge, whine, indulge, or lean out.

No way that these guys have been infected by the cultural super virus!

Chapter 5: networking for pro-natalism

The Collinses want you to join them. We are actively building a diverse network of families with the grit to make it through this maelstrom, they say on the website. If you are committed to a high birth rate and building a healthy culture for your family, we want to talk!

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The power couple on a mission to save the world from demographic disaster - MercatorNet