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Subject: Computers vs. Humans - meaningless?

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 11:02:47 03/25/02


I was thinking about what computer vs. human matches really mean. If Gulko
doesn't get a single win against the 4 computer programs, does that mean
anything? Does that mean that the computers are generally stronger? Or does it
mean that in the course of 8 games, he made 2 less than optimal moves? If the
latter, I don't believe that means anything as far as whether or not computers
are better than the best humans yet.

So Kasparov loses his last match against Deep Blue, Gulko will likely lose his
match against the computers, and what if Kramnik loses to Fritz? Does that
really mean anything? We still have a fairly small pool of games from world
class players vs. computers. You could even throw Gulko out of the "world class"
category, but someone else should make that decision, because I have no idea of
his playing level compared to a Kasparov of Kramnik.

It seems like it would take regular competition between world class human
players and computers for the consensus to be that computers are better than the
best human players. We all know computers are "really good", so unless we can
say with relative certainty that computers are better than the best human
players, do any of these matches mean anything? As far as I can tell, these
matches just lead to the conclusion that "we don't know".

What do you think?

Russell



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