From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sat Mar 24 2001 - 12:25:52 MST
Spike Jones wrote
> In the last game of the match, after Deep Blue made its last move,
> Kasparov resigned and asserted that some human must be helping the
> machine! Its play demonstrated such a deep "understanding" of
> positional chess that the grandmaster was convinced no machine
> could ever do it. Only after it was repeatedly demonstrated did
> Kasparov finally accept that his beloved game really can be
> reduced to a set of equations.
No way in the next N centuries will chess be reduced to
equations. I know what you probably mean, and I agree:
It was shocking to some chess players that their beloved
game has been mastered by the very pragmatic algorithms
used by chess programs.
> Modern chess software running on modern computing hardware
> plays in a way that is indistinguishable from a really
> sharp human player.
But I have seen a number of computer combinations that would
never in practice be found by an over-the-board grandmaster!
The tactical insight is really superhuman. The program
considers possibilities too counter-intuitive for people
because it has the resources to. And some chess combinations
(we have now learned) begin from really strange, inhuman moves.
The look-ahead is so pronounced, that even in situations where
positional considerations appear to dominate, the machine plays
as if it understood very deep principles (that I do not believe
have yet been programmed in).
> My friends, that's all it is, and that's all we are,
> wet computers that somehow do what we do. Both cases
> give me hope that we will eventually figure out a way
> to encase ourselves in a more robust and permanent "body".
> spike
I totally agree! We've never been anything but (biological)
machines from day one, and it gives me the creeps that I go
around all day without a backup.
Lee Corbin
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