Re: Moravec's estimates?

From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sun Apr 08 2001 - 00:11:17 MDT


Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > ...OR, maybe Penrose is right, and there are quantum aspects to human
> > cognition, so we need quantum computers to even come close to the
> > performance. But I don't know of any solid biological or philosophical
> > reason to think Penrose is right...
>
> I disagree with Penrose on this. After following the development of
> chess software over a period of 25 years, I can say that almost
> *nobody* predicted the software would get as good as it ended
> up being today. I didn't either.
>
> Many club players made incorrect predictions about it year after
> year after year, as the machines just continuted to get better and better.
> Furthermore, much of the improvement was *strictly* because
> of faster hardware, displaying many humanlike "insights". After
> watching this, Ive become convinced that there is nothing
> magic going on inside a meat computer. spike

Well I wouldn't bet the farm based on that. Chess is strictly a "mechanical"
game where there is a finite set of moves that can be pretty easily "graded"
so the machine can pick out what's the best sequence of moves to make. The
chess playing software we have today is not "thinking", it is simply an over-
grown calculator.

-- 
Brian Atkins
Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.intelligence.org/


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