The Future

Abstract

It is most natural that man finds a way for his newest, greatest tool, the computer, to compete, and the game of chess is the ideal medium for the competition. Chess may serve the computer industry as auto racing has the auto industry. Many advances in the auto world were first tried on racing models and then after refinement incorporated into commercial vehicles. This may be the pattern in the computer field, too, where techniques used by computers to play chess are on the cutting edge of developments in complex problem-solving. Of course, there are many ways in which computers can compete. We have seen robot mice working their ways through mazes, computers competing with one another as artists and musicians and even as poets. There have been programming contests involving hundreds of participants. But at least for the near future, chess is likely to remain the primary battlefield and testing ground for computers.