Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Higher Games
Technology Review Higher Games: "The verdict that computers are the equal of human beings in chess could hardly be more official, which makes the caviling all the more pathetic. The excuses sometimes take this form: 'Yes, but machines don't play chess the way human beings play chess!' Or sometimes this: 'What the machines do isn't really playing chess at all.' Well, then, what would be really playing chess?"
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As Technology Review mentioned, it is hardly debatable whether or not computers are equal to human beings at chess. Considering the long past matches between the world chess champion Larry Christiansen and the program Chessmaster 9000, where the program won 2.5 matches out of 4. This caused a lot of debate, whether or not computers had the potential to be smarter than humans.
Originally, chess programs were built using a brute force method, to examine all possible moves and determine the "best" of them all. However, some players found ways to beat the systems. The programs had a weakness in their lack of experience, instincts, and their inability to learn from their mistakes, all things a human player can do easily. As programmers developed better and better chess-playing programs, the programs' behaviors became similar to that of a human player, until they because essentially the same.
Computers can only beat humans at chess because they are based on human knowledge, replacing reason with amounts of brute force and processing speed. "Computers...are only as smart as the program they are running. The smartest computer players imitate humans, only without the random mistakes," noted Frank McGillicuddy. "That computers are our superior in some tasks, such as rapid math calculation and maybe Chess, should not be a surprise. There will always be things humans can do that computers cannot."
Sources:
News: Chessmaster 9000 Defeats Reigning US Chess Champion Larry Christiansen
http://gameinfowire.com/news.asp?nid=850
Game Theory 4: The Human Factor
http://members.cox.net/mathmistakes/chess.htm
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