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From: ta2cs220@troi.cc.rochester.edu (H. Y. Firooznia)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: computer life?
Message-ID: <12548@ur-cc.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 91 07:36:54 GMT
References: <1991Feb26.213835.27074@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> <1991Feb28.190553.20519@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
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In article <1991Feb28.190553.20519@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> dailey@buster.cps.msu.edu (Chris Dailey) writes:
>In article <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>
>>   Computers play chess.  They play chess well.  But they play chess in
>>a fashion utterly unlike human beings, because they operate in a manner
>>very different from the human brain.  
>
>However, these computers are designed (in many or most cases) with the
>human's strategies.  They are algorithmic representations of human
>thoughts.

  Or, perhaps you could say that the chess-playing computers are designed
with some of the strategies that the human designers perceive themselves as
using.  This distinction is important, I think, because it seems that chess
computers are, at present, not playing in quite the same fashion as humans
do.  

  Deep Thought, for instance, the current computer-chess world champion,
evaluates something like 10^6 board positions per move (or some other very
large number.)  The new version should be able to handle 10^3 times as
many.  Now, maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems unlikely that humans (Kasparov
included) analyze this many boards in their head when playing a game of
chess.  Granted, it seems that some searching is performed, but not on this
scale.  Yet, Kasparov can still consistently beat Deep Thought.  It seems,
therefore, that humans use other methods.  Present-day computers use some
human techniques, but nevertheless play differently from humans.  Not
completely differently, but significantly so.


>The only way (IMO) they could operate in a manner truly very
>different would be if they were the ones that taught themselves how to
>play.

  How do you define "different"?  Would you say that Deep Thought plays in a
manner different from humans?  How different?

-Hoss