Stevenson Cup 2012/13

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This is the branch of computer science that aims to create a 'thinking machine' that would pass the Turing Test defined by the British mathematician of the same name in 1950.The early pioneers of computer chess programming believed that AI would be the path to a machine capable of beating a strong human player. However, the rapid advance of hardware technology meant that by the 1970's the brute force approach gained the ascendent, a position that is even more the case today. Chess programs now play to GM strength by utilising computational power to search for moves and evaluate positions rather than understanding the game. In contrast, the human brain has a very limited search capability but a much deeper understanding of the game and consequently is a more efficient tool for determining strategies.Disappointingly the AI approach to chess programming has developed very little from the concepts of Claude Shannon and his contemporaries. Apart from heuristic models for pruning search trees there is nothing 'intelligent' about the programs. Schach-Theorie by Wassily Kandinsky, 1937