Whenever I played chess with my Dad, he would let me win some of the time, but also teach me a lesson by beating me — showing me where I went wrong.
I always wanted to legitimately defeat him (and I still try), but it turns out all I really need to improve is a $569 chess robot capable of smashing Grandmasters at their own game.
This is the SenseRobot 4-in-one AI Chess Robot, and while I can see it's a fantastic teaching tool for the fundamentals of chess, it does make me worry that we're all a little bit cooked by this super intelligence. Let me explain.
How it works
So like pretty much all chess-playing robots, this works with AI — using cameras added into the stalks as eyes to look over the board and see the move you made.
You make your move, and push a button to end your turn. It will then decide the next move, and with its robotic arm, pick up the next piece with a little bit of suction and place it. If you want to see the time taken per side, that's all available on a display on its face.
You've got 10 levels of difficulty, and the options to either play International Chess, Chinese Chess, Checkers or Gomoku.
And yes, it will even tell you off if you cheat. I tried illegal moves and sneakily taking my opponent's pieces off the board, but it promptly put the piece back in place and gave me a scolding for daring to deceive it!
Of course, this is as much for education as it is for competition, and there are hints it can give via the screen in those moments where you're feeling stuck. There are even endgame mini-game scenarios you can play out, and you can watch the robot arrange the board into these layouts for you to play through.
It's legitimately a fun piece of a kit I'd really like in my living room.
We may be cooked
But then I took a look at SenseRobot's accolades over the past couple of years — not only annihilating students at college chess championships, but also beating chess Grandmasters.
I played at level 7 and got destroyed. Chances are, if I give it to my chess-loving Father-in-law, he'd get beaten handily, too. And where's the fun in the game if you're fighting an algorithm with superhuman levels of thinking?
Luckily, that's where the training and difficulty management came in, so that I don't have such a bruised ego next time I square off against this robot!
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