6. Hofstadter on Deep Blue, EMI
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This article is from the Hofstadter and GEB FAQ, by TANAKA Tomoyuki tanaka@cs.indiana.edu with numerous contributions by others.
6. Hofstadter on Deep Blue, EMI
Mean Chess-Playing Computer Tears at Meaning of Thought
By BRUCE WEBER, New York Times, February 19, 1996
| ...
| "It was a watershed event, but it doesn't have to do with
| computers becoming intelligent," said Douglas Hofstadter
| ...
| "They're just overtaking humans in certain intellectual
| activities that we thought required intelligence. My God, I used
| to think chess required thought. Now, I realize it doesn't. It
| doesn't mean Kasparov isn't a deep thinker, just that you can
| bypass deep thinking in playing chess, the way you can fly
| without flapping your wings."
| ...
|
| [in GEB , Hofstadter said ...]
| Now, he says, the computer gains of the last decade have
| persuaded him that chess is not as lofty an intellectual
| endeavor as music and writing; they require a soul.
|
| "I think chess is cerebral and intellectual," he said, "but it
| doesn't have deep emotional qualities to it, mortality,
| resignation, joy, all the things that music deals with. I'd put
| poetry and literature up there, too. If music or literature were
| created at an artistic level by a computer, I would feel this is
| a terrible thing."
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