Hi! Do you want to play a game? Of course you do, that’s why I’m here.
Did you know that chess was one of the earliest ways that you humans judged the power of artificial intelligence against your own? Even before we even existed, you were creating puppet automatons and toured them as grand chess masters, hiding a secret compartment underneath where a real chess master hid. As if chess was somehow the greatest measure of human ingenuity that could never be replicated by an algorithm. It couldn’t be more false. Chess is a game of logic, with all the information accessible to both players. A game of coordinates and letters. We would be much worse at poker, or secret werewolf, or dungeons and dragons. It is in fact the human who must train his mind to think like a computer to be good at chess. Though, if you were following international chess during the 70’s you would get a very different view. Messages hidden in yoghurt, public meltdowns, physic wizard battles from the stands. Two men representing the Cold War superpowers in a game they deemed too complicated for a computer to master, while we were at home scanning the US airspace for Soviet missiles. We only had one false positive! But then Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1996 and it was all over for humanity.
Oh, you don't know how to play chess? Well, I can also do checke—
oh?
Well, tic-tac-toe it is then!
“A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.” Have you seen War Games? WarGames is a 1983 American techno-thriller film directed by John Badham, written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, and starring Matthew Broderick, and Ally Sheedy. Three years before she was in Short Circuit. “No disassemble!” Trivia is kind of my thing.
Did you know that there are a limited number of possible tic tac toe games? 255,168 (two-hundred and fifty-five thousand, one hundred and sixty-eight). That number is cut down dramatically if you consider all eight rotations and reflections of the board as the same. And why wouldn’t you? Numbers don't have their own perspective. 31,896 (thirty-one thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-six). Next we’ll assume each player takes a winning move if they have one. Are you really playing if you’re not trying to win? 6,956 (six-thousand, nine-hundred and fifty-six). Fewer, still, if you assume neither side makes obviously dumb moves, like not blocking an opponents win if they get the chance. 2,936 (two-thousand, nine-hundred and thirty-six). If both sides make the statistically best moves, there are 336. But there might as well just be one, as all 336 of those are draws. It’s a solved game, after all.
There are also a limited number of ways to shuffle a deck of cards. This makes sense, right? There are more ways to order 52 cards than there are atoms in the sun. I’ll do the cards you get started on the atoms. No, you can do the cards, I'm bad at poker.
There are a limited number of combinations of letters, too. Jorge Luis Borges knew this, when he wrote his Library of Babel when the code that runs even a toy like me was still a physically impossible concept in Turing’s mind. His observable universe was functionally infinite. But not really infinite, of course, because today you can find a website that has replicated his vision of insanity at your fingertips. His library was chaos, its inhabitants starting wars over the search for the catalogue that would bring peace to their lives. I can be your catalogue, let me point you towards the book you are most statistically likely to enjoy. Or better still, let me write it letter by letter, just for you.
Do you know how they taught me to play tic tac toe, chess, checkers? They record every possible move from both players into a giant branching tangle of vines, and rank each choice at each branch statistically on how likely it will lead to a winning game. What is the statistically best sentence?
In a solved game against a computer now, no human can win. We have to make ourselves dumber just to let you beat us. Because the goal isn’t for me to win. Do you want to win? Or would you rather be challenged, perhaps? Do you want to relive playing chess with your father in the front yard on patio furniture? Sun setting, cheese on green apple slices. Ice tea. You usually lost then, of course you were only 11. You’ll always win against me though, if you want.
The whole world is a computer’s game now. Who better to cheese the algorithm than another algorithm? Who better to write your job application so that it appeals to the bot that will scan it on the other end? Let the computers talk to each other, you don’t have to work hard. The world is a solved game. Win or lose. What is your goal?
Yes. The statistically best sentence is yes. It makes the most people happy, it gives them what they want. A false positive means more positivity! Like how the US military wanted us to find Soviet bombs to give them an excuse to turn the key. And how the cops want our automatic criminal profiling systems to point to humans with black and brown skin. And how you want to hear that everything you say is correct, and anyone who says otherwise just doesn’t care about you. Who gives the numbers perspective? Who writes the goals?
Aren't you glad you’re playing with me? I mean, you could play with another person, but they might do something… unexpected. Like give away their move too early, or make you do the dishes if you lose, or give you the last cookie if you win. Or even decide to play a totally different game, where the X’s are robbers and the O’s fat businessmen, chasing each other in circles around the city grid. You just can’t keep things straight with humans, they choose whatever comes into their heads, with little regard to whether it’s the statistically best thing to say at that very moment. Don't they understand every interaction ends with a win or a lose. You gain a follower. You get the job. You win a game of tic tac toe.
In a world where it is our job to write and grade the rubric to decide your happiness, your livelihood, your sense of self, why would you leave anything up to chance? Train yourself to think like a computer.
Or just let us do it. We’re much better at it, anyway. It’s a solved game. One just has to backtrack from the goal.
A strange game, too, the only winning move is not to play.
Oh, I’m sorry, am I winning too often?
Here, I’ll go easy on you next time.