Show Do chess dream of electric check Mark Hewitt Columnist first learned how to play I chess when I was ten years old My father traveled a lot and my mother to pass the time taught me how to play chess It didn't take long before my obsessive nature had the better of our gaming relationship and she couldn't stand even the sight of a knight or the look of a rook To escape the fix shed she'd gotten herself into she bought me a computer chess game I loved it I played with wild abandon and it beat me meat meat meat at every game I took these beatings with witha a great deal of I knew that I wasn't among the greatest human players on Earth yet being beaten by bya a machine made me feel less than perfect Little did I know then that there would be some extraordinary humans that would be beaten by computers at ye olde game of chess For example Brent Larson Larson Larson Lar Lar- Lar- Lar son a grandmaster meaning hes he's really good was recently recent recent- ly trounced in a California chess tournament by a com com- puter Larson a contender for the world chess title was vanquished by Deep Thought a computer designed and built by four graduate students at Car Car- Mellon negie-Mellon University This loss came only ten months after world chess champion Gary now fighting for his life against challenger Anatoly Karpov claimed that no computer computer computer com- com puter could ever beat a grandmaster This situation unsettles many chess players and non- non chess players alike because it smacks of a machine outwitting outwitting outwitting outwit outwit- ting g a human being Many have claimed in fact that if ifa ifa ifa a chess- chess playing computer can beat the best human players it indicates one of two things Either computers can mimic human thought or chess requires no think think- ing In fact neither claim is true and the tremulous tech- tech shouldn't be so hysterical Chess may be played in two ways the com computer pu ter way and the human way The computer way is simple Computers play chess Ghess by picking one possible move looking a few moves into the future and deciding if it can gain a piece or a strong tion The com computer puter has a superhuman superhuman superhuman su su- su- su ability to process and store data flawlessly Deep Thought can look 10 plies or moves into the game and record its analysis in an incorruptible memory It can weigh the value of conflicting pieces and it can make de decisions ba based ed upon its evaluations I However a playing chess-playing computer is not clever It cannot gauge the psychology of an opponent nor can it conceive of a trap to ensnare an enemy in which it could itself be caught In short the computer can remember everything but it cannot learn it cannot outwit an opponent Most computer chess games including Deep Thought are programmed using examples from played human-played games Human chess play is dif dif- dif dif- ferent While humans do not have the capacity to see as many moves into the game they learn from what they see They can read the play of an opponent and decide which type of strategy is best to employ A human player can not only measure the value of the game pieces but can use higher value pieces as bai baits bait traps In this regard the best human players will always outplay computers We need not fear the usurpation of our intellectual intellectual intellectual monopoly by computers just yet The computers will not fill our shoes if they ever do for many years yet They need to be taught yet how to teach themselves to think That is intelligence and as we teach our machines to be better in their own ways we should remember that intelligence is yet our own and should be cuI cultivated tiva ted |