Miah, A. (2008) A Deep Blue Grasshopper: Playing Games with Artificial Intelligence. In Hales, Benjamin.Philosophy Looks at Chess, Open Court Press.
"what would it mean if a computer could play soccer effec- tively? What kind of claim about intelligence could be made? Chess seems to lack a number of the types of the decisions that face a soccer player and, for this reason, I suggest tests for human intelli- gence must develop into other kinds of games, which have the advantage of being mixed-space—both real and yet closed. Crucially, understanding the sociohistorical development of chess as a test for intelligence informs this proposal. Indeed, it is pre- cisely the presence of a sociocultural context that allows chess to appear as a persuasive test for intelligence. However, it is neces- sary to develop a test that involves a broader range of decision- making actions. Thus, my thesis is that chess is the wrong kind of game to test for intelligence, rather than a criticism of game play- ing generally as our form of measurement. Chess is certainly the right kind of test since it is gamelike, but it is not the kind of game that can reveal whether a machine has humanlike intelligence. Other kinds of games, such as those that more closely approximate sportlike games, where creativity and spontaneity adopt a more complex variation, are more useful to study. Within such activities, opportunities for nonlinear decision-making and deviance from preconceived strategic patterns exist. The temporal element of such activities demands of its players a different kind of knowledge than does chess playing."