[lbo-talk] Women and Chess: Deep Blue Weighs In

[ravi]

At around 5/5/06 10:49 am, Michael Pollak wrote:
> 
> Dear Deep Blue:
> 
> You complete faker.  You're an obese bulk processor who never taught us
> a damn thing about AI which was the whole point of building chess
> programs. You beat Kasparov but you failed the Turing test.  That's why
> no one programs computers like you anymore.  You were the ultimate proof
> we wasted our time.
> 
> So the idea of you having consciousness is just contemptible lie.
> 
> The new generation of PC based chess programs can not only kick your ass
> with 1/1000th the processing power but -- much more fascinatingly --
> seem to be capable of actual creation.  Their algorithms seem on
> occasion to lead to an "emergence" -- to moves that no one has ever
> made, and that don't reduce to the underlying rules.
>

Yes, I never got the big deal with putting all of human intelligence (or
AI) under the measure of chess prowess. Seems like too easy a problem
considering it does not deal with the messiness of the real world at
all. Turing's test (of intelligence and consciousness) has a clever
component that should be obvious: the grounding of the two in human
activity. As one of the few men in the first part of the 20th century
who axiomatized algorithms (or a particular type of problem solving),
removing any vestige of intention or thought, it was perhaps insightful
of him to create a test, however flawed, that brought them back to the
fore. Or perhaps I am just stretching my interpretation to put
Heidegger's words in Turing's mouth: Science does not think. (Nor do
human beings, it seems!)

	--ravi

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