"Half-a-century of Computer Chess:
The Longest Running Experiment in Knowledge Engineering"
| jn |  |
inf.ethz.ch |
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Thursday, Sept 3, 1998
2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Games have often spawned new branches of science that found practical applications much later. Prominent examples include probability theory, indispensable workhorse of science and technology; and game theory, whose impact on the social sciences is growing. The question "can computers play chess?" has served computer science since its beginning as a measuring rod for the effectiveness of heuristic search and knowledge engineering. This talk characterizes the nature of human chess knowledge, surveys the development of computer chess, and raises the issue what computer science can learn from the longest and best focused experiment in computer heuristics.