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Re: computer-go: Authenticating the identity of a remote go-playing computer program
From: "Vlad Dumitrescu" <vladdu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
If I may throw in my 2 pence worth...
Since as someone said before, cheating cannot be prevented even when humans
are playing (either having a stronger player make secret signs, or maybe a
more high-tech solution), I'm not sure why it would be a bigger problem with
computer-go... except maybe that more people might try to cheat.
A cheater might win a couple of competitions, but not all of them will be
through the net, and if that program never competes "in person" or if when
it does it performs poorly, then everyone will know it as a cheater...
Since organizing an on-line competition would require much less effort both
for the competitors and the organizers, I think people will participate even
if there were no money prizes. And then I think few (if any) will try to
cheat...
In fact, it is exactly the same situation as when playing on nngs - who
certifies that I am who I say I am? Or that I don't have a better player by
my side? Or a book? And people still compete there...
All in all, I don't really think cheating should be a big issue...
What do you think?
regards,
Vlad
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I pretty much agree with you, 99% of the time, all we want is a game
and we don't care who we are actually playing.
There have been a few interesting cases of possible cheating in Chess
tournament, where one program has been accused of being replaced with
another much stonger one, or where one program has been introduced
into a human only tournament but secretly in order to win prize money.
The stories are extremely interesting but I won't tell them here. You
won't see that case any time soon in GO.
The Chess program Crafty has been a big source of controversy because
it's public domain, and it's one of the better programs. On the chess
servers, there are many versions of Craftys being played by chess
author wannabees. In one tournament there was a version of Crafty
being played under a different name, but the author was up front about
this and it was allowed. However that didn't stop the controversy
because he claimed that it was substantially modifed, and some
entrants didn't feel this was the case. These are problems that are
likely to occur over and over again and having some kind of system of
authorship proof would be a blessing, not a curse.
People have also taken commercial programs and wrapped them up as
their own. A competent programmer can do this, and you would not
notice by looking at the screen. In one notorious case, the famous
and powerful mephisto program (which was a stand-alone computer) was
taken apart and put into a different case and presented as a new
program. The actual author of this program was observant enough to
notice that the moves looked like moves HIS program would make and
thus this imposter was exposed. That's why I believe that the moves a
program make can serve as an extremely good fingerprint as to
authorship. I think this is much more true in Go than in Chess.
If nothing else, program authors can protect themselves with a little
judicious programming. Some programs have a hidden feature to
identify their authorship, a unique set of moves that no program would
ever play without being explicity programmed to. If you hide this
feature, you can later prove with no question that a program belongs
to you.
Don