Letter: Chess master

Nick Flach
Saturday 02 March 1996 19:02 EST
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DEEP Blue, the chess computer that recently beat Kasparov, analyses around 3 million moves per second. Kasparov would consider no more than a handful of moves worth making in this time. Therefore, whatever Deep Blue is doing, it is not "thinking" in the same way as its human counterpart, and many would argue it is not thinking at all ("From Socrates to Silicon Chip", Review, 25 February). It is like giving an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter each for an infinite amount of time, and hailing the one that produces Hamlet as a literary genius.

Nick Flach

London W5

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