Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind

Diego Rasskin-Gutman

ISBN 10: 026218267X / ISBN 13: 9780262182676

Published by MIT Press Ltd, 2009

About this Item

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.

Seller Inventory # CIN026218267XVG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind
• Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 026218267X
• ISBN 13: 9780262182676
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

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 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.