Ajedrez: Hombre vs Computadoras

Excelente articulo del maestro Garry Kasparov sobre el ajedrez y la inteligencia artificial. Algunos pasajes que me gustaron,

"In 1985, in Hamburg, I played against thirty-two different chess computers at the same time in what is known as a simultaneous exhibition.

[...] It illustrates the state of computer chess at the time that it didn't come as much of a surprise when I achieved a perfect 32–0 score, [...]

[...] Eleven years later I narrowly defeated the supercomputer Deep Blue in a match. Then, in 1997, IBM redoubled its efforts—and doubled Deep Blue's processing power—and I lost the rematch in an event that made headlines around the world. The result was met with astonishment and grief by those who took it as a symbol of mankind's submission before the almighty computer.

[...] Today, for $50 you can buy a home PC program that will crush most grandmasters.

[...] The number of legal chess positions is 1040, the number of different possible games, 10120. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. In his book Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman points out that a player looking eight moves ahead is already presented with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy. Another staple, a variation of which is also used by Rasskin-Gutman, is to say there are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe. All of these comparisons impress upon the casual observer why brute-force computer calculation can't solve this ancient board game.

[...] Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be. But for the purposes of argument and investigation, chess is, in Russkin-Gutman's words, "an unparalleled laboratory, since both the learning process and the degree of ability obtained can be objectified and quantified, providing an excellent comparative framework on which to use rigorous analytical techniques."

[...] Having a computer partner also meant never having to worry about making a tactical blunder. The computer could project the consequences of each move we considered, pointing out possible outcomes and countermoves we might otherwise have missed. With that taken care of for us, we could concentrate on strategic planning instead of spending so much time on calculations."

BTW, el ajedrez es un juego dinamico de informacion completa (Kasparov lo describe en una parte de su articulo) y por tanto tiene una solucion, ie., una forma optima de jugarlo mediante la cual gana siempre el que tiene blancas o el que tiene negras o hay empate. Pero por los numeros de arriba aun no existe la tecnologia capaz de calcularlo.

Si les gusto el articulo y aun no lo vieron, les recomiendo el documental Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (2003) sobre las partidas de ajedrez de Kasparov contra Deep Blue.