Hex, chess, and artificial intelligence: UAlberta presents "A Smart Move"

Public lecture explores University of Alberta expertise in artificial intelligence and the history of humans versus machines in games of strategy.

Andrew Lyle - 11 March 2019

What is it about machines playing games that captures human imagination? What makes games a compelling subject of study for scientists looking to advance the field of artificial intelligence? Those topics will be examined through the history of chess-bots and the game of hex by Jonathan Schaeffer and Ryan Hayward, professors in the Department of Computing Science.

Man versus Machine

"Early on in the history of artificial intelligence, chess was called the 'drosophila of AI'.The idea was that chess is to AI as the fruit fly is to genetics," said Schaeffer. "Games are nice environments to experiment in. In chess, the space is fixed, the rules don't change, there is no random element, and everything is known about the state of the game."

Author of Man vs. Machine: Challenging Human Supremacy at Chessand a professor in the Department of Computing Science, Schaeffer will discuss the history of chess-bots stretching

from 1770 to today.

"I was interested in writing about the human element of both sides of the challenge-the humans who willingly put their reputations on the line, as well as machine and the programmers who pushed the boundaries of AI technology," said Schaeffer. "In reality, the book is about humans versus humans."

The full story on Hex

A game of geometric strategy where two players try to link one side of the board to the other, Hex originated in World War II and was popularized by famed scientists Piet Hein, John Nash, Martin Gardner, and a hockey-playing physicist.

The history of the game is enough to fill a book-and professor Ryan Hayward has done just that in Hex, the Full Story.

"It's surreal that such a beautiful game was created amidst the horror of World War II. It became incredibly popular-like Sudoku-in Denmark for a few months in early 1943, and then seemingly disappeared, until it resurfaced in Princeton in early 1949," said Hayward. "How did this happen?"

A long time Hex fan, Hayward and his research team built MoHex, the world's strongest Hex-bot, and have solved the game on all boards up to size 10x10.

On our game at the University of Alberta

Schaeffer and Hayward's publications are the latest in a history of expertise in artificial intelligence and games of strategy in the Department of Computing Science.

The University of Alberta is the third highest-ranked institution in the world for artificial intelligence and machine learning research, and has been involved in toppling checkers with computers in 1994, then chess to a team including a University of Alberta alumnus in 1997. More recently, artificial intelligence has been used to take on poker in 2015, and Go in 2017.

"The games we work on get more complicated and challenging," said Schaeffer. "But that means we learn new things about AI."

Following their lectures, Schaeffer and Hayward will will be joined for a panel discussion with Martin Müller, expert on computer Go and co-supervisor of the developers of AlphaGo, and Michael Buro, author of the champion Othello-bot Logistello and world's strongest skat-bot Kermit.


Don't miss "A Smart Move: Artificial intelligence & strategy games," hosted on the University of Alberta North campus on Wednesday, March 13. The lecture begins at 6:30 pm, followed by a panel discussion and moderated Q&A. To reserve your seat at this free public lecture, register online before March 12.