Re: Machines that think...

A.E. Manier Sr. (A.E.Manier.1@ND.EDU)
Fri, 16 May 1997 15:16:41 -0500

My impression of the exchange generated by the bonfire of Kasparov's vanity
is that Percy-L participants are construing the match as a variant of the
Turing Test. Judges of a Turing Test must work to enhance their acuity in
the discrimination of texts produced by humans from texts produced by
computers.

The media coverage given the Kasparov-Deep Blue match has not had
sufficient content justify any conclusions about the acuity (precision in
discrimination) of this chess match as a putative Turing Test.

Deep Blue may have won by playing just like a computer.

Kasparov has asserted that Deep Blue did not play like a computer in Game
2. But who knows what he meant by that? It is obvious he is insinuating
foul play, but on what sort of evidence?

None of the accounts I read, ( including the NYT, the IBM site, the
International Chess Club site, and a surprisingly philosophical piece by
my youngest son, Jeremy, a staff writer for the Chicago Tribune),
provided any account whatsoever of how we could tell whether or not Deep
Blue played like a computer in game 2.

Most contributors to this list, I'd guess, would be better able to tell if
a translation of a particular passage from <Madame Bovary> had been
generated by a computer.

The obvious rejoinder to the suggestion that sci-fi (text or film) offers a
superior variant of the Turing Test is that one or more human beings write
all the speeches for all the speakers in such literature.

Are you guys sure you're talking about what you think you're talking about?

Ez Ed