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Comparing Man and Machine?
An anonymous reader asks: "Today Garry Kasparov's last of 4 chess matches with the computer X3D Fritz ended in a draw. The totals of all 4 games leave the two opponents tied 2 to 2, revealing that even though the technology has advanced significantly since Kasparov was beaten by IBM's Deep Blue in 1997, the odds are not always on the side of brute computational power. This leads me to pose the question: is chess really a viable way to test whether man or machine is truly superior? Until AI becomes flexible enough to challenge us in arenas like art and music, what would be a better real-life competition?"
Obviously, the steel-cage no holds barred death match is the answer.
I'm sure someone will mention Go, just because it's always said that it's much harder to get a computer to do. But I don't see the point of playing games against computers anyway, what does it really prove? It proves that the data fed in to it (from hundreds of sources) and the (several) programmers are better at logically defeating a game than ONE person is. I'm amazed he won two games, this says far more about him than it does about anything else.
What exactly are these contests trying to prove anyway? When the computers gain a clear victory over the humans, what have we learned?
Not my point originally, but I forgot which author said it.
People used to foot-race early automobiles. People used to compare the productivity of a loom weaver to a steam powered automated loom. No one races cars any more but no one really questions if cars are superior to people. They are superior vehicles sure - because that's what they're designed to do.
A computer designed to play chess will eventually be able to beat any human player - but questions of superiority are superfluous. I'm not worried that Kasparov can beat me at chess because I'm not a chess player. He might be a superior chess player - hell, he's probably a superior person in many ways - so what? Does he win a cookie for that? Do I have to wear a scarlet letter? Is his superior chess ability mitigated because I could probably take him at one on one basketball? No.
The whole concept is basically stupid. Even when we build a true AI, put it in an andriod body and teach it to do everything better than we can do it - so what? If we managed to build Data from Star Trek - does that diminish us? If human ingenuity eventually allows us to build a superior human - that doesn't change anything really. Some people will feel the need to compete with it, some will ask if it has a soul and the rest of us will go on with our day.
The parent article talks about comparing man and machine - which is superior - the whole concept is superfluous. We don't compare man and tree or man and weather even though both can do things we can but better. Machines will always beat man in the end at something because otherwise why build them? If walking were in every way more efficient than taking a car, we wouldn't have cars. We build them to improve our ability to move. If the best chess-playing computer we could build would constantly get caught in the three move checkmate - there would be no freaking point. It is precisely because the machine will in some way, or even many ways, better that it exists.