Manual de Chess King 2015 | Page 40

PART 1 • Some thoughts on kasparov vs. Deep blue Then I can go back and test myself in another game against the computer, starting the process anew. This is exactly the kind of «integrated domain» envisioned by Doug Englebart. I use the computer to test me and to educate me. I use it as a tool to find the answers to complex questions about chess, to test out ideas that I have, to help me identify strengths and isolate weaknesses. In short, the computer is my partner in the quest to improve my chess, rather than an enemy to be feared and reviled. Just where did this idea of «computer as enemy» come from, anyway? ELECTRONIC BRAINS: THE COMPUTER IS YOUR ENEMY It's ironic that one of the world's leading «tech heads», Arthur C. Clarke, did so much to engender society's general mistrust of computers. By the mid-1960's, most people had a mental picture of a computer as being some kind of large cabinet with flashing lights and spinning tape reels and which could perform mathematical tasks at a prodigious rate. Computers were interesting, a bit off-putting, but essentially benign machines in the minds of most. Then came HAL. HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (and, to a lesser extent, the female-voiced computer on Star Trek) helped to define computers and the concept of artificial intelligence for a whole generation of people. And the picture HAL painted wasn't pretty. In the film, a strange black monolith is uncovered at the bottom of the crater Tycho on the moon. It beams a high-powered signal outward to the vicinity of Jupiter. The government sends a team of scientists to Jupiter to investigate the recipient of this transmission. The spacecraft carrying these scientists is controlled in large measure by an intelligent supercomputer named HAL. Making a long story short, two of the scientists decide to scuttle the mission. HAL has been programmed to carry out the mission at all costs. So he (it?) murders all of the scientists save one, who manages to disconnect HAL just as the ship is approaching Jupiter. Charming picture, eh? And I find it ironic that the story was penned by one of technology's greatest champions, the father of the communications satellite, Arthur C. Clarke. 40 chessking.com