Wednesday 1 September 2010

I for one welcome our computer overlords

Here is an interesting article on one of the commentators at the upcoming Olympiad. BlueGene, a computer chess program, will select 20 of the most 'intriguing' games from each round of the Olympiad and broadcast its comment over the internet. While getting computers to churn out lines of analysis is a fairly easy task (just see the 'expert' commentary from users on various BB's and servers when big games are in progress) but to actually have a program decide what is 'intriguing' is a real leap forward. Hopefully this decision won't just be about ratings, as some of the most interesting chess can be found on the lower boards of the Olympiad. Of course it isn't perfect chess, but again, this isn't what BlueGene is promising!

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