Choose Your Weapons
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday May 19, 1997
Chess is one thing, but let's see a computer with the smarts to beat us at Pictionary, says JON CASIMIR.
SO A computer beat a human being at chess. Big deal. It's not exactly an even contest, is it? Chess is a game that plays to the computer's strengths.
We've all heard fans of the game going on about it being all instinct, magic and flair. And I have no doubt all that's true, when you play the game with humans. But though extraordinary human intelligence is required to master it, chess is ultimately a game of finite possibilities. There are only so many moves that can be played, in so many combinations. It's mathematical.
So it was inevitable that sooner or later someone was going to program a computer well enough to counteract instinct, magic and flair with the devastating force of sheer, ugly number crunching. Being surprised that a computer beat Garry Kasparov is kind of like being surprised that a Ferrari would beat Michael Johnson over 200 metres. The machines just do what they're built for. A car does speed; a computer does calculation.
Sure, it took a few decades before we came up with a horseless carriage capable of scaring a sprinter, but it was always going to happen. Just as Deep Blue, or a cousin, was always going to prevail on the black-and-white board.
Sceptics say Kasparov blew the final game with the kind of simple blunder that any neighbourhood Grand Master would have picked up. But if Deep Blue hadn't won this time, it would have at the next attempt. Or the one after. Or the one after that. Like the car, the technology would eventually have developed the speed. So let's all cheer the programmers for their extraordinary, anally retentive effort in getting Deep Blue up to the line.
And let's get on with our lives in the safe knowledge that the victory is not another sign that human beings are being superseded by our technology.
It's not another reason to let your Frankenstein complexes run free. The contest was not, as Newsweek magazine put it, "The Brain's Last Stand". To reduce the brain to a mere calculating machine insults all of us. (Before you write in, I don't seek to reduce computers to mere calculating machines, either.)
Let's face it, there are games that computers would be good at, if applied, and games people are good at. A computer can play chess. A well-programmed computer would be great at Scrabble, too. And most card games would suit their capacity for figuring and playing percentages.
But there isn't a computer around capable of beating a six-year-old girl at playground hopscotch. And if you had a couple of bottles of red wine under your belt at a Saturday-night dinner party, you'd still beat a computer at Pictionary.
You'd flog it mercilessly at Scruples. You'd kick its ass at charades. You'd make a joke of it at musical chairs.
And remember that game you used to play in primary school where you folded up bits of paper into little wedges and attempted to flick them across the goalposts of your mate's raised fingers? Computers would be crap at that too.
Maybe one day the balance of gaming will tip in favour of the silicon chip. But it's going to take a Bigger, Smarter Blue to do it.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald
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