Brute Force in Chess and Science¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Michie, Donald

Affiliations: The Turing Institute, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Note: [1] This is, but for a few corrections, a reprint of an invited paper, delivered on May 31, 1989 to the Conference of the Canadian Information Processing Society on its meeting on May 29 to June 2, 1989 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The Editors gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint to CIPS. The CIPS meeting was a climax of and a postlude to the Sixth World Computer-Chess Championship, played in the same location during May 28-31,1989, generously sponsored by AGT (Alberta Government Telephones).

Abstract: Computer-hostile chess; upset at Long Beach; Deep Thought vs. Bent Larsen; good in parts; Dominic Lawson vs. Deep Thought; use of knowledge; grandmaster backlash; obscurity of machine strategies; grandmasters sheltered from complexity; machine strategies not necessarily explainable; chess and science; limits to human theory-construction; limits to graspability of solutions; complexity impasse; the protein prediction problem; endgames of molecular science.

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1989-12303

Journal: ICGA Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 127-143, 1989