‘Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.’ — John D. Rockefeller
It’s been a decade since world chess champion Garry Kasparov was first defeated by a computer. Since then, even after humans retooled their games to match computers, computers have managed draws against the world’s greatest players. It seems only a matter of time before computers will win every time — if humans are willing to play them, that is.
But each time computers have shown their remarkable abilities, detractors have claimed that the computers are really inferior because they apply brute-force tactics: methodically tracing every possible move instead of creatively reasoning toward a solution.
Daniel Dennett says we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the computers. After all, human chess champions study and memorize sequences of moves, encyclopedically sorting through thousands of variations as they play. Isn’t this the same thing the computer is doing?
Vaughan at Mind Hacks points out that these detractors are using a classic denialist tactic:
As soon as computers became good at chess, it was dismissed as a valid example because, ironically, computers could do it. A classic example of moving the goalposts.
Similarly, I’ve recently heard a few people say “If computers could beat us at poker, that would be a genuine example of artificial intelligence”. Recently, a poker playing computer narrowly lost to two pros.
Presumably, ‘genuine intelligence’ is just whatever computers can’t do yet.
photo { Chess champion Gary Kasparov executes a move during a 1997 match against the highly sophisticated computer Deep Blue as the computer’s designer watches }
