Re: Machines that think...
ken ketner (BXOKY@TTUVM1.TTU.EDU)
Fri, 16 May 1997 15:56:55 CDT
I would like to propose a modest scenario concerning the issue of whether
Deep Blue (hereafter DB) can really think, and whether "a machine beat
Kasparov (hereafter KV)."
Suppose you had a big room, with nothing in it but people and fone lines
and paper and desks and pencils, and no computers of any kind. Now suppose
this big committee SAID it had a computer in ther, but kept the door closed
so no one could really see. The people, bu the way, are very expert at chess.
Now KV is enticed to play this committee which is called DB. It only sends
the results out a DB Play monitor (which someone types in after the committee
figgers out what the DB move is going to be). Now a committee of people who are
about as good as KV can probably beat KV.
Ah, but you say, there really was a machine DB that beat KV (or at least
KV resigned in disgust and so was legally beaten). But the machine did not
work alone. It had this vast committee of humans helping it.
Or let us put the matter this way. It would not be fair to say that
a machine beat the world's best human chess expert until the time when
someone builds a machine, turns it on, then just leaves it on its own, with
no programmers, no support committee.
The analogy with airplanes is not fair. A fair test of whether an airplane
can fly faster than a man would be the following. Put a man and an airplane
on a field. Both are setting quietly, the airplane is "off" and the man is
sitting sleeping in a chair. A judge comes out of a nearby building and shouts
FLY! The man gets up from his chair, jumps flat footed for 4 feet, the referees
come out and measure it and holler, MAN FLEW 1.3 METERS. The judge shouts FLY
one more time. The airplane just sets there, does nothing. The judge
disqualifies the airplane for nonaction. Man wins with his flight of 1.3
meters. Not exactly birdlike, but enough to win that contest. A pro-airplane
fanatic in the grandstand hollers, "The contest was rigged -- no fair, put a
pilot in the airplane." The judge takes that under advisment and issues a
reading, to wit: "The contest was to be between a man and an airplane --
nothing was said about a contest between a man and an airplane/pilot. Man
still won." It ws appealed to the Supreme Court, but the original decision
was upheld.
Now why ain't that parallel to the DB/KV case?
Ken Ketner