[sd8f9iu]

Ok, the implication in my comment was that they can't be weakened like humans, not that they cannot be weakened at all. The phenomenon of random mistakes does not need to be programmed in the engine, it is a byproduct of lowering the search depth or eval function.

[thom]

Gotcha, apologies for the misread. I do think it’s an interesting problem space and worthy of more resources, there are all sorts of things that weaker, more human engines _could_ be helping humans with right now beyond traditionally just helping to memorise optimal lines. I don’t think this even means things like Maia that are perhaps human level but opaque, but rather being able to fit the kinds of heuristics humans use in eval or candidate move ordering. It would be great to be able to generate lines for specific opponent weaknesses (certain endgames, pawn structures, missed tactics etc). Even using engines to find things like forced draws from certain positions is harder than it should be right now. I’d love to see more chess _tooling_ rather than more pure engine research. If and when I retire from analytics in other sports this is what I’d like to spend my idle hours on.

[sd8f9iu]

Yup I agree, I think there's tremendous opportunity for computer tools to aid chess. Things like Lichess's recent ability to automatically categorize puzzles by the type of tactic was very cool, and only scratching the surface.