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.
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