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Codename Brutus: Chess-Playing FPGA PCI Card
rockville writes "Brutus, a FPGA add-in PCI card developed by ChessBase and Dr. Christian Donnegar, just dominated a strong field of human players at a tournament in Germany. It's the first serious chess-playing FPGA architecture since Deep Blue was disassembled after its victory over Kasparov in 1997. Pictures of the card and a short description are here."
Chess will fail to be dominated by people.
I don't think there is an issue of who will dominate chess - man or machine. People play computers at chess for practice or fun, because people want it. Normal competitive chess will continue to be restricted to humans, as are most competetive games and sports.
If there was some equal opportunity regulation for sports and games, the robots with the lazer beams would take over hockey, soccer, squash etc...
But is it really the computer that's winning? It's one thing if all we do is give a computer the rules of Chess, and then see how it does. However, the computer is being told how to think and what to compute by humans. The computer is just automating (via opening/closing/midgame books, brute force, etc.) a human created algorithm. All that the computer has over the human is the speed of number crunching.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
But is it really the computer that's winning? It's one thing if all we do is give a computer the rules of Chess, and then see how it does. However, the computer is being told how to think and what to compute by humans. The computer is just automating (via opening/closing/midgame books, brute force, etc.) a human created algorithm. All that the computer has over the human is the speed of number crunching.
It's an interesting point. Depends on what you define winning as.
If you are comparing the ability of own human to do something unaided vs. the ability of another human to build a tool to do the same, then the tool builders win.
If you are comparing chess skill, then the designers need not have more chess knowledge then the master, they just have a different way of approaching the probelm. In that case, as a matter of pure chess skill, hte master "wins" over the human designers.
*shrug*
I don't think the question is all that important, except to illustrate that "the computer" doesn't win, it's merely a tool.
=Blue(23)
P.S. Of course, the computer is your friend, keep your laser handy.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.