Evidence of Learned Look-Ahead in a Chess-Playing Neural Network

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Jenner, Erik, Kapur, Shreyas, Georgiev, Vasil, Allen, Cameron, Emmons, Scott, Russell, Stuart
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Jenner, Erik
Kapur, Shreyas
Georgiev, Vasil
Allen, Cameron
Emmons, Scott
Russell, Stuart
author_facet Jenner, Erik
Kapur, Shreyas
Georgiev, Vasil
Allen, Cameron
Emmons, Scott
Russell, Stuart
contents Do neural networks learn to implement algorithms such as look-ahead or search "in the wild"? Or do they rely purely on collections of simple heuristics? We present evidence of learned look-ahead in the policy network of Leela Chess Zero, the currently strongest neural chess engine. We find that Leela internally represents future optimal moves and that these representations are crucial for its final output in certain board states. Concretely, we exploit the fact that Leela is a transformer that treats every chessboard square like a token in language models, and give three lines of evidence (1) activations on certain squares of future moves are unusually important causally; (2) we find attention heads that move important information "forward and backward in time," e.g., from squares of future moves to squares of earlier ones; and (3) we train a simple probe that can predict the optimal move 2 turns ahead with 92% accuracy (in board states where Leela finds a single best line). These findings are an existence proof of learned look-ahead in neural networks and might be a step towards a better understanding of their capabilities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_00877
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evidence of Learned Look-Ahead in a Chess-Playing Neural Network
Jenner, Erik
Kapur, Shreyas
Georgiev, Vasil
Allen, Cameron
Emmons, Scott
Russell, Stuart
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Do neural networks learn to implement algorithms such as look-ahead or search "in the wild"? Or do they rely purely on collections of simple heuristics? We present evidence of learned look-ahead in the policy network of Leela Chess Zero, the currently strongest neural chess engine. We find that Leela internally represents future optimal moves and that these representations are crucial for its final output in certain board states. Concretely, we exploit the fact that Leela is a transformer that treats every chessboard square like a token in language models, and give three lines of evidence (1) activations on certain squares of future moves are unusually important causally; (2) we find attention heads that move important information "forward and backward in time," e.g., from squares of future moves to squares of earlier ones; and (3) we train a simple probe that can predict the optimal move 2 turns ahead with 92% accuracy (in board states where Leela finds a single best line). These findings are an existence proof of learned look-ahead in neural networks and might be a step towards a better understanding of their capabilities.
title Evidence of Learned Look-Ahead in a Chess-Playing Neural Network
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00877