Computer’s Win

* It is with continuing interest that I read the flurry of articles concerning Garry Kasparov’s loss to the Deep Blue computer. Yet it was inevitable that sooner or later a computer would beat the human champion at the game of chess. For chess can be reduced to a computational problem, allowing a suitably powerful computer to triumph. Did people act so surprised when a computer could win at checkers? Did everyone hail such a victory as a milestone in computer science?

Instead, we should look at games that are provably intractable, where a computer needs to use more than some heuristics combined with brute force. It will probably be a long time before a computer will beat the world champion in Go. And far more revolutionary when (or if) it happens.

NICHOLAS WEAVER

Huntington Beach