The Betfairy is correct about chess computers.  If they didn't have a massive set of moves and positions pre-programmed, they wouldn't be anywhere near as good even with brute force.  In fact, they used to play in a different style lacking the creativity of humans.  I haven't really tracked them much for a number of years, so they may have improved in that respect.

Computers are still not that good at Go, which although much simpler looking than chess, has far more possible positions and combinations.  Brute force is therefore still a long, long way off mastering Go.

On a more general point, Artificial Intelligence has not made the progress it should have over the years.  Even the Turing Test is not close to being met without bluffing.

At least I have learned what the Turing Test is today, so that is something.  Before today, I had never heard of it. I looked it up on Wikipedia, but I found the whole thing a bit boring.

Most people would agree that italicised writing should be reserved for quoting people. Ideally we'd all be using the "quote" bb code for that, but it'll never happen.

Why not try a different font in the mean time...

The best chess players in the world do also memorise openings (up to the first 30 initial moves in some cases), can recognise positions that have been played before and act to what happened in the past and do mechanically play endings (although we tend less and less to see endings, because the opponent can also recognise a lost position)

Chess Masters do only mentally analyse 2 or 3 moves out of the (average) 25-40 available during mid-game.

All the things described above are programmed into the world best chess programs.

The human brain is a complex collection of neurons, interconnections, electrical and chemical signals and some other things. And sometime from now, we'll also be able to develop artificial brains capable of achieving the same complexity, starting from a very basic set of basic components (just like the brain of a child or even that of an embryo)

Neural networks and its theory are still in their infancy but so was medicine (and to some extent it still is) 100 years ago.

As to whether humans have moral (and centre of moral) I tend to believe that humanity has (very slowly) found out that complying with certain moral patterns is better than complying to none. And we, as children, learn to develop brain patterns than conform (in addition to those pre-programmed in our brain to help us with basic survival) to the moral that has helped our societies (I guess that's west/central-european for most of the posters) evolve better than others.

Refusing to see that we will be able to create better versions of ourselves, is like when many denied that flight could be achieved or that we could go to the moon.

Star Trek is an example: science fiction series that talks about warp fields ... someone in real life already developed equations to achieve warp-like travel. And some others have started refining them to decrease the energy needed and ease the process. Engineers will get at some point involved to solve real life implementation problems and ... Yes ... faster than sound was also impossible ...

And so can computer programs analyze dozens of lines of play (although they admit they never go deeper than 8 moves, even if they could). Only that know and with the advise of those that know how the game is really played (Masters), they just go deep into the 2-3 variations that matter. But also children learn from the masters and program that into their brains as neuron patterns.

Chess is a simple process and it has a unique solution. Once every single variation has been calculated and stored, white will always win. Just a matter of time.

Speech recognition is different in the sense that it deals with "pattern recognition", which is what our brains are best at (recognize faces, races - dogs, humans, etc -. And this is where neural networks come into play (although today the IVR systems that do customer care use customized algorithms to recognise our "yes", "five" and others) It won't take long for neural network theory, combined with algorithms, where speech recognition will be regular business (for years, different models of telephones have supported voice dialling) and will not fail if the speaker happens to have a foreign accent.

But even in this area, we'll be easily able to surpass ourselves, given the limitations of our auditive systems.

Theory and science aside, I'd like to add that seers, mediums, mentalists and similar species have already proven that human behaviour is predictable and many have made fortunes out of it.

saint-pilgrim,

Whilst I agree that we are only very early on in the age of computing, it has also become clear that some basic hurdles are not being overcome in terms of understanding thought.  Chess is just used as a (simple) example for research.  We can only estimate the number of positions and moves possible and the relatively slow advances of computing power do not even begin to get anywhere near "solving" (fully enumerating) chess.  Connect 4 was only solved a few years ago.  I suspect that quantum computing (or some other technology yet to be conceived) will be required to make any breakthroughs.

Incidentally, I haven't seen any evidence of white always winning in an optimal game of chess.  Have you got any links?  Empirically, I would have thought that a draw would be the outcome, as the majority of games between top players are draws.

If we're so simple, what am I thinking in 5 minutes?

I would say that there are some chess openings that are better for black, if played between two computers, and these are rarely played at grandmaster level, because the end result will be the same.  Yet, amongst average players, these could be better for white, because it is more difficult for moderate players to defend than attack.  A good example of this is The Fried Liver Attack. Also, Petrov's Defense is such a solid defence, for black, in the hands of a top player, that 1 e4 e5 2Nf3 has become less common at the top level nowadays.  (This is according to a top female grandmaster on chess dot com.)  Of course, I'm not much good at chess myself and never will be.  I just have some knowledge of it.  I know that Mythical Prince, on the ante post forum, fancies himself as a player, so he is the one to ask about chess.

An individual or group response to s set of set stimuli can be predicted to some extent. You only have to read a yet experimental psychology journals to see this. Humans are inexact calculating machines, we constantly look for shortcuts.

Which is why we have learned responses. It would be too exhausting to compute everything from scratch each time. So your brain writes "subroutines" for most repetitive tasks which it engages whenever you have to.

Ask yourself this, which side of your face do you start shaving first? I'd bet its the same side each time (unless you are in a hotel and the lighting is different). Which shoe do you put on first? There are lots of example where your specific behaviour will be predictable to someone who knows what to look for, yet you probably don't even realise it yourself.

Now... *HOW* an individual actually computes their responses/actions and how to mimic how the brain interprets and stores all this innformation is a entire different and vastly more complicated area. 

I'd argue there is no one set algorithm for "tying your shoeslaces". There may be a mathematically optimal or locally least-error appraoch, but if we could dissect exactly how I'd expect everyone to have a slightly different approach.

In fact I am going there now, and if I am black I will be use Petrov to get at least a draw...

I am white ; queens gambit accepted

There are surely regularities in group responses along the lines of what Zola suggests, and the exploitation of these when they are sub-optimal must be central to winning at betting (especially e.g. IR trading).

My sense re Hawking's comment on free will is that if we know every component of a system (e.g. the brain) and every manner in which any component interact with any others, then we will be able to replicate the system. By 'free will' I take Hawking to mean 'we cannot replicate neural systems yet'. But I'm not sure that he's making a point about complexity to the effect that he thinks we'll never be able to simulate / replicate the brain.

There may be "a long way to go" but that does not mean it is not possible. The brain in a highly non-linear, multi-noded self-referential feedback system. Even if we knew exactly how everything linked together and interacted - slight variations in input could lead to vastly different outcomes in a handle-turning computation.

However... I expect the brain has a lot of grey-area (no pun intended) in its OS which filters out a lot of computational jitter which modern computers as yet cannot. If anyone has had experience simulating multi-dimentional highly non-linear systems on massively parallel machines will know what a pain the smoothing fudge factors you have to use to stabalise them [:p].

Free will could just be a initialisation problem.

Emotion is again just a learned response, which we have found useful to develop for social situations. I see no reason why a significantly complex computer could not replicate emotion. In fact I see us just as nothing more than biological computers anyway!

I do fully agree with Zola. Emotions are just developed (also some ROM programming to let us face unknown situations and let the human race remain on the move) patterns to let us adapt to situations.

And this adaptation patterns can be programmed.

The day we make computers complex enough to be better than ourselves (call it ... the next step in evolution), we'll have to add "emotional responses" (to some extent) to let the better-humans be able to react and adapt to unexpected situations and be able to develop a sensible behaviour, in case the situations repeat.

One of the issues is going to be that humans like to define themselves to be special, so the definition of something that is capable of independent thought is going to be very rigorous indeed (until the machines define it to be something that they can do and we can't )

I bet you that any useful replication of the brain by compuetrs happens on Wall St first ( if and when it ever doeas happen ).

Nice one saint-p.
No morals on Wall St. that's for sure.

You are right Positive. Possibly the following moral standards apply:

-- In a regular office, the % of people that would execute an action knowing it may (possibly will) the life of a colleague (or that of a 3rd party), no matter how many times they have gone out together, have had dinner together with the wifes and similar actions, is X.

-- In a stock market trading environment (never met Jerome Kerviel, but know a few that operate with large amounts), the % of people is Y.

And in my personal experience Y is orders or magnitude greater than X.

But of course, that implies no judgement of which moral may be the best ...

Thats why algorithmic trading in the new goose. Y can be 100%.