Author: Edward Seid
Date: 17:08:19 01/01/03
If you're looking for some light but thought-provoking reading for the holidays, may I suggest "Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI". You can order it from amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558607838/hawaiichesspr-20 It tells the story of Blondie24, a computer program that taught itself how to play checkers using an AI implementation of evolution and natural selection. It provides a refreshing and different perspective than that of the brute-force number crunchers, ie a vast majority of all current chessplaying programs. As an avid fan of computer chess and an aspiring programmer who hopes to write a chessplaying engine someday, I was a bit saddened by a statement made by the author... "... if Deep Blue is truly the triumph of artificial intelligence, then we've had very little success in getting machines to 'think', for Deep Blue has next to nothing to do with computers that think. It's mainly a very fast calculator designed for one task: playing chess". That statement made me question why I should even bother writing a chessplaying program, for it's really nothing more than a fast calculator. Wouldn't it be infinitely more satisfying to create something that could 'think' and learn, even if it only played at an amateur level?
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