Sections

Laziness at fault, not computers

I am writing in response to Dean Bakopoulos' column on Feb. 15 ("For arts and emotion, press return now"). Bakopoulos fears that the continuous advance in computer chess players, as evidenced by the recent defeat of the world chess champion Gary Kasparov by Deep Blue, foretells the imminent arrival of machines that will be able to create works of art superior to any created by humans. Bakopoulos, I can assure you that this is not the case.

No researcher in the field of artificial intelligence has made any sort of firm proposal about how we might design a machine to create art that a human would find unique and vital. In contrast, the mechanisms that most computer chess programs use are fairly straightforward -- high speed search of the game positions with some tricky ways to eliminate unpromising lines of play and a vast database of opening moves and end-games.

Instead, direct your attention to a few of the many computer tools that actually assist human creativity. The World Wide Web has provided a medium for a potentially unbounded sharing of creative works. Many professors and students in the University's digital library project are working to utilize artificial intelligence techniques to assist a person in providing, acquiring and using information on the Internet. Some day these techniques may help you to find works of art and literature that you never could have imagined existed, from all parts of the world.

Clearly these wonderful tools will not guarantee a new renaissance of worldwide intellectual and creative achievement. If humans do not create and make available works of art on the Internet, or the typical person does not care to look beyond some computer equivalent of tabloid talk shows, one of the most popular products available on the other great technological marvel, then we will indeed be lost in emotional and intellectual numbness. But we will not be able to blame that on the designers of computers. We will have only our own laziness and ambivalence to fault.

WILLIAM WALSH