Computer chess: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:32, 12 April 2004

Revision as of 05:32, 14 April 2004

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Chess-playing computers are available for negligible cost, and there are many programs (even the free [[GNU Chess]], Amy, Pepito, [[Crafty]], and [http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ more]) that play a game that, with the aid of virtually any modern [[personal computer]] can defeat most master players under tournament conditions, while top commercial programs like [[Fritz]] have surpassed even world champion caliber players at blitz and short time controls.

However, to the surprise and disappointment of many, chess has taught us little about building machines that offer human-like intelligence, or indeed do anything except play excellent chess. For this reason, computer chess, (as with other games, like [[Scrabble]]) is no longer of great academic interest to researchers in [[artificial intelligence]], and has largely been replaced by more intuitive games likesuch as ''[[game of go|Go]]'' as a testing paradigm. Chess-playing programs essentially explore huge numbers of potential future moves by both players and apply a relatively simple evaluation function to the positions that result, whereas a game like ''go'' [[computer go|challenges]] programmers to consider conceptual approaches to play.

The brute-force methods are useless for most other problems artificial intelligence researchers have tackled, and are believed to be very different from how human chess players select their moves. In some strategy games, computers easily win every game, while in others they are regularly beaten even by amateurs.