Author: Jorge Pichard
Date: 09:28:21 02/04/03
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=4%23527 Computers are currently only faster in very specific repetitive actions, like number crunching. It just so happens that chess moves can be reduced down to that sort of situation. In general, grandmasters actually only seriously examine a few moves in great depth, as their brains allow them to recognize inferior moves very easily via pattern recognition and experience. A computer on the other hand, does a brute-force analysis of trees of thousands or millions of moves, giving a score to each and then determining which is the best. Comparing the processing power of a human brain to a chess program in this situation is just ludicrous, though. Whereas the chess program is just analyzing moves, the human is also processing vast amounts of sensual information (sounds nearby, where the pieces on the board are visually, etc.) as well as a myriad of other functions (maintaining the balance of the body, breathing, processing food, etc). I'll be much more impressed when a robot can sit down, process the board visually, move the pieces itself, and so on, without humans having to feed moves into it via keyboard or sensors on the chess board, but even that will be a huge leap from what the human brain is doing all the time. Our brains are excellent at things that computers are terrible at and computers are excellent at things our brains are terrible at. Someday, I'm sure, computers will become as good at those things as we are, and along the way, we'll have developed an enormous understanding of how our brains actually work, but right now, this is a drop of water in an ocean. As several grandmasters have already lost several games to various computer programs, the first prediction of Kurzweil seems definite. But to think that people will lose interest just because computers can beat the grandmasters makes no sense at all. Most people are already more than matched in skill by chess software running on a decent cpu, but we're still playing, and we'll keep doing it. - by Belandrew
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