Word: chess
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...already knew that computers are first-rate at solving equations, entertaining children, burying friends and enemies under E-mail and doing many other useful chores. They have also been brushing up on their chess. By the end of the second game between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov last week, it was clear that IBM's extraordinary computer was playing better chess than any machine ever had before. After Saturday's game ended in a draw, the match was still tied at one win and three draws apiece, but technology watchers were pretty well agreed: if the machine doesn't triumph...
...bother about the actual date on which the computer finally vanquishes the human world champion? After all, it can already beat you. That in itself is suggestive and important, because no human being can play chess without thinking. And no human could beat the chess champion of the world, even in a single game, without bringing significant intelligence to bear. Shouldn't we conclude that Deep Blue must be a thinking computer, and a smart one at that, maybe brilliant? Maybe a genius? Aren't we forced to conclude that Deep Blue must have a mind? That henceforth Homo sapiens...
Winning at chess, of course, is much harder than adding numbers. But when you think about it carefully, the idea that Deep Blue has a mind is absurd. How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing and cares about nothing have a mind? It can win at chess, but not because it wants to. It isn't happy when it wins or sad when it loses. What are its apres-match plans if it beats Kasparov? Is it hoping to take Deep Pink out for a night on the town? It doesn't care about...
...sell computers short. What's important about Deep Blue's success is what it tells us about the nature of computer science. We like to think of it as a fast-moving field. In fact, it is plodding but not easily discouraged. In the 1950s, many scientists decided that chess playing was an area in which computers could make rapid headway. Some predicted the imminent coming of a world-champion computer. But the problem turned out to be much harder than they imagined, as did many other problems in artificial intelligence. Outsiders tended to write the whole effort off; computer...
...past 15 or 20 years," says an industry figure, "the metaphors when he's speaking of competitors are always violent. He'll say, 'This is the quarter we put a knife in their chest,' or, 'The life will be choked out of them.' The metaphors don't come from chess, and they don't come from the Bible. He sees this as personal combat...