Chapter 300 Blue Star
"Sorry, I lost my composure."
After Gu Xiaochun blurted out his reaction, he quickly realized he had acted out of line.
He could question the chess skills of so-called artificial intelligence,
but he couldn't question the computational power of the machine that Xi Xiaoding described—
Yuanxin had no reason to deceive him on that front.
"Heh, it's fine," Xi Xiaoding said lightly, showing no annoyance.
"This supercomputer's processing speed still isn't enough to fully unleash the algorithm's potential.
And gathering the training data took a lot of time, so for this match,
please be gentle with us, Professor Gu."
"If it's really studied hundreds of thousands of games..."
Gu Xiaochun chuckled, his tone a little more cautious now.
"I should be praying that it cuts me some slack."
When Yuanxin first contacted him, Gu had done a little homework.
He understood that AI learning mainly involved imitation and calculation.
If the program truly had absorbed hundreds of thousands of games within a few days,
it meant it could probably handle most standard tactical setups.
Gu couldn't help but grow a bit more serious.
At that moment, a few graduate students under Xi Xiaoding quickly connected a laptop via Ethernet, ran some quick tests, and then sat down to operate it.
Xi's top student, a fellow from the Electronics Institute named Gou Jun, settled in front of the laptop.
"Professor, President Shan, everything's ready," Gou Jun said.
"Good. You can start," Xi Xiaoding said casually.
He turned to Gu.
"Professor Gu, please go ahead."
"Alright."
With a click from Gou Jun, the AI program made its first move.
Gu glanced at the move and responded in textbook fashion.
The AI, seemingly without hesitation, made its next move immediately.
...
Su Yuanshan and Xi Xiaoding watched the game unfold with interest.
Very quickly, the match moved into the middlegame.
In chess, the middlegame was the longest, most intense, and most complex phase, where attack and defense clashed in intricate patterns.
Gu Xiaochun clearly slowed down, thinking much harder now.
Su Yuanshan wasn't much of a chess player, but he could read the board well enough to judge that, so far, the two sides seemed evenly matched.
Leaning over slightly, Su Yuanshan whispered to Xi:
"Interesting…
You're not telling me you guys might actually beat someone like Gu Xiaochun on your first try?"
Xi shook his head.
"It depends on how the rest of the game plays out.
You know—
we only had limited time to train."
Indeed, unlike IBM's Deep Blue, which had relied heavily on feeding massive databases of games into the system,
Yuanxin's AI had been built differently:
The rules were coded in,
a few hundred games were fed in as examples,
and then the program had been left to learn and self-train by playing against itself—
what's called "self-play" in machine learning terms.
Training speed was surprisingly fast.
In the future, AlphaGo would be able to self-train millions of games in a single day.
While Yuanxin's computing resources weren't anywhere near that level yet,
in chess, a few tens of thousands of games a day were possible.
Minutes ticked by.
Gradually, Gu Xiaochun began taking longer and longer to think through each move.
But little by little, the game began tilting in his favor...
As night fell, Gu had built a clear advantage.
"The AI resigns," Gou Jun said after glancing at the laptop.
Although a little disappointed, he still smiled.
"Professor Gu is impressive."
"No—
The AI is impressive," Gu said, letting out a long breath.
He picked up his teacup and stared at the board.
"It made a mistake—lost a knight.
After that, it kept trying to recover.
If not for that one mistake,
I might have been forced into a draw."
Xi Xiaoding asked,
"Oh? Which move was it?"
"When it lost the knight.
Afterward, it could've opted for a defensive draw instead of staying aggressive.
Its attacking style is too strong."
"Thank you for the feedback, Professor Gu," Xi said.
"Let's go—
you've worked hard enough.
Time for dinner."
...
Thus, the first battle between Yuanxin's supercomputer AI and a human chess champion ended quietly.
Over dinner, after learning that this was the world's first AI with true "self-learning" capabilities,
Gu Xiaochun was swept up in patriotic fervor.
He eagerly replayed the match,
offering detailed feedback and many valuable suggestions.
The next day, they played two more games.
As expected, Gu Xiaochun won both.
...
"Overall, Blue Star's performance isn't bad,"
Xi Xiaoding said as he and Su Yuanshan walked toward Pandora Lab.
Since the supercomputer didn't technically belong to Yuanxin,
Xi hadn't initially bothered to name the AI,
just calling it "test."
But after the matches, they decided it needed a name after all.
And so it became "Blue Star"—
a nod to Earth itself, the blue planet.
Even though Blue Star had lost all three matches,
Xi gave it high marks.
Laypeople watched for drama.
Experts watched for technique.
Gu Xiaochun, though a chess master, was a complete outsider when it came to computer science.
He could tell that Yuanxin's AI was vastly superior to the clunky programs found on game consoles—
its aggressive style genuinely pressured him.
But he couldn't grasp the underlying algorithms at all.
Even so, Gu remained confident.
He believed that even if they used a faster supercomputer,
he could still beat Blue Star.
But within Pandora Lab,
they saw things differently.
The first matches may have ended in defeat,
but they had proven that Blue Star's path was the right one.
"With a bit more algorithm optimization, personality tuning, and additional training,
it should be unstoppable,"
Su Yuanshan said as they stopped under a pavilion.
He laughed.
"Seeing how confident Gu is, I almost feel bad.
Maybe next time, we should directly challenge Kasparov.
He's been making a lot of noise lately."
The "Kasparov" he referred to was currently the undisputed No. 1 in the world,
having already won seven world championships.
In Su Yuanshan's previous life, Kasparov would go on to win seventeen world championships,
and eleven Chess Oscars—the highest honor in the chess world.
His achievements were simply unparalleled.
Last year, discontent with FIDE, he had quit and started his own professional chess federation—
preparing to organize his own world championship and challenge the system.
If history remained unchanged,
he would eventually be the one IBM's Deep Blue challenged.
"No,
we've already agreed with Gu Xiaochun—
rematch in six months,"
Xi said, winking.
"His team's pride was hurt.
They want another shot at redemption.
After we defeat the domestic champion,
then we can go after the world champion."
"Haha, whatever you decide."
Su Yuanshan laughed, grabbed a bike parked near the pavilion, and pedaled off casually.
"I'm heading to the Optical Lab.
Got a visitor waiting."
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