Word: chess
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News of Deep Blue's victory over reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov has been splattered across newspapers everywhere, including our very own Crimson. But what does it all mean? Does it deserve the status of an historic event? Has IBM built artificial intelligence, or does a devoted chess-playing super-computer deserve the same status as an electronic pencil sharpener...
Richard Reti, the great Czech grandmaster of the first half of the 20th century might be though to have proposed an answer in his response to a question as to how many moves he prepared ahead in a chess game. "Only one," he replied, "but it is always the best move...
Reti was joking, of course. Grandmasters typically look about five moves ahead in a given position, and sometimes many more. But Reti's quip captures something at the heart of human chess-playing ability: intuition. And in so far as humans rely on intuition rather than calculation for the decisions of everyday life, his statement captures what is at the heart of human intelligence more generally...
What we can agree on, however, is that IBM has created a computer that plays chess very well. And insofar as playing chess well is something that we think only intelligent beings can do, it can thus be said that a computer was constructed which displays one aspect of intelligent behavior. But one might object that Deep Blue just does a whole lot of calculations very quickly, and that's not intelligence...
...rooting for the ghost in the chess machine, but it's been a p.r. bonanza for its creator...