Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 48 of 171
Chess programs teach nothing about human chess
From a practical scientific perspective, the main benefit of the quest for artificial intelligence is what it will invariably teach us about the brain. But a note of caution is warranted here. As renowned cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter points out, the supercomputer programs that can play chess tell us nothing about how humans do it. Okay, we understand how to make a computer play chess; now how do humans really do it? Even when AI successfully created programs that could beat the best human chess players, it did not increase our understanding of how humans play chess. It might turn out that creating a truly conscious machine will produce a similar result.