Mind versus machine, technology versus art

One of my high school friend's father was a scientist. That was his actual job title - Scientist 4 for the Franklin Institute. He loved a good debate, and would conclude most dinners with a challenging question. For example, once he said, "any problem you can name in America is a problem of plenty."

I miss those dinner debates and wish I could throw this in for debate. Maybe my internet friends can help?

I have long contended that any human technological advance can be traced to one or more of only four motivators:

• Dominate it


• Kill it


• Eat it


• Mate with it

The 4th one - mate with it - is the master one that drives the need to dominate, kill and eat. Once we've passed on our Selfish Gene into the pool, the universe is fairly well done with us.

Facebook? Twitter? Let's face it - designed to help with mating. How much time between the creation of texting before it also became known as sexting?

But then I got to thinking about art, in its many forms. Some would argue that culture is just another "technology" that is used to dominate, kill, eat and mate. One of the better presentations of that is in the book Guns, Germs and Steel.

But it still rings hollow to me. The cave drawings by Paleolithic man may have been a hunting instruction manual, but I think not. I think there was an artistic urge in man that needed expression. A need for beauty, in and of itself. A need to create and for others to consume beauty. Vladimir Nabokov said that writing a novel was a necessary thing for him - that he had to get it out of him, like the demands of childbirth.

And then I got to thinking about something that lies between the two realms of physical survival and mental beauty: chess. I grew up as a tournament level chess player and I was at the height of my playing abilities and rating back in the Fischer-Spassky days. I closely followed the development of computer chess.

There is a theory about chess - that it was invented in India for a military king to develop strategic thinking. But anyone who has played chess at a certain level knows that within those 64 squares lies incredible beauty, elegance, surprise and even humor. I have literally LOLd at some chess moves. A great chess game is like an opera spontaneously written by two composers.

And also consider this: there are more possible games of chess than there are atoms in the universe. And we, humankind, invented that. We then went ahead and invented the computer. We thought hey, this is terrific, let's have the computer learn to play chess.

Then we came to bemoan the day when computers started beating humans in most chess games.  Personally, I thought, big deal. My car can "outrun" any Olympian. I suppose it was in the realm of "thought" that we were disturbed to be outdone. OMG, can Skynet be far behind? But for me, I'm amazed that humans held on as long as they did, and can still draw and occasionally win against the best supercomputers.

Let's compare. The supercomputer can analyze and evaluate billions of board positions every second! They have access to a database of every game ever played. So they can just look up the best theory. When it gets to the endgame with a few pieces, the computer has everything solved in advance.

The human grandmaster has his memory. He uses his intuition to know which few avenues to explore. A great player can feel force vectors radiating on the board, as if it is a living thing. He has the ability to visualize a few paths maybe 5 or 10 moves deep.

So really,  it's actually quite magical that such a meat machine can beat the relentless electronic calculating monster. It's a clear indication that we are only simulating human thought with our calculation engines, and that actual human thought is somehow very different.

Gary Kasparov, perhaps the greatest player ever, is now suggesting that instead of human versus human and computer versus computer matches (there are now separate world championships!), we should have humans with computer augmentation playing other humans with computer augmentation. For now, that would be a mouse and keyboard and touchscreen interface. But it's easy enough to envision the day when there is a more direct cognitive connection.

Kasparov argues that this would create the most beautiful chess, this combination of our way of thinking with the computer's incredible memory and calculating engines. I think he's right, and I also think that other art forms may be similarly transformed through this marriage with technology.

And hopefully that will help add a fifth and more powerful motivator to technology advances - to create and consume ever greater beauty.