Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind - Hardcover

Rasskin-Gutman, Diego

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 026218267X ISBN 13: 9780262182676

Publisher: Mit Pr, 2009

Synopsis

How the moves of thirty-two chess pieces over sixty-four squares can help us understand the workings of the mind.

When we play the ancient and noble game of chess, we grapple with ideas about honesty, deceitfulness, bravery, fear, aggression, beauty, and creativity, which echo (or allow us to depart from) the attitudes we take in our daily lives. Chess is an activity in which we deploy almost all our available cognitive resources; therefore, it makes an ideal laboratory for investigation into the workings of the mind. Indeed, research into artificial intelligence (AI) has used chess as a model for intelligent behavior since the 1950s. In Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman explores fundamental questions about memory, thought, emotion, consciousness, and other cognitive processes through the game of chess, using the moves of thirty-two pieces over sixty-four squares to map the structural and functional organization of the brain.

Rasskin-Gutman focuses on the cognitive task of problem solving, exploring it from the perspectives of both biology and AI. Examining AI researchers' efforts to program a computer that could beat a flesh-and-blood grandmaster (and win a world chess championship), he finds that the results fall short when compared to the truly creative nature of the human mind.

About this title

About the Author

Diego Rasskin-Gutman is Research Associate and Head of the Theoretical Biology Research Group at the Institute Cavanilles for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, Spain.

Review

[G]iven its rich discussion of how chess programs have developed, Chess Metaphors should appeal to both chess enthusiasts and those interested in cognition and the mind.

―Melody Jue, The Information Society

Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 026218267X
• ISBN 13: 9780262182676
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 205