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Now,
that all the hullabaloo has calmed down from the defeat of the world
chess player Kasparov, to the IBM computer, “Deep Blue”, and the
dust from this earth shattering shock has settled down a little,
consequently leaving a cleaner and clear-cut vision, let us try and
analyze the significance of this happening.
Kasparov himself considered the match as a confrontation between man
and the computer, an arm wrestle, between the creature and its maker.
And to make matters worse he got quiet annoyed when he realized there
was a Russian flag on his side of the board and one of the United
States on the opposite side.
The
majority of the chess followers, fans and analysts also fantasized
this clash under a Manichean prism, from where there could be no
doubts as to who would be the winner. That is why the reality of
defeat was particularly painful to many of them. All over there was
astonishment and perplexity: “The machine has beaten the human being!”
“The computer will dominate the world!” “Humanity has been defeated!”
If a
computer has beaten the best chess player in the world, then we can
securely affirm that a machine can, in fact, play chess better than
the most experienced human being. Further still, that the machine can
have more intelligence than a human being, at least more intelligence
to play chess. This evidence brought about the disapproval and
indignation of many. This, however, demonstrates two things:
1.
That the ability to play
chess is an exclusive product of the development of the intellect, and
that this intellectual capacity is only restricted to the environment
of matter. Precisely because it is exclusively linked to matter, it is
possible to transfer an analytical intellectual capacity to a
materially designed and perfected object, which is in this case a
machine especially made to achieve this aim. A “cold intelligence,”
capable of tirelessly analyzing 200 million possibilities per second,
demonstrates that it is more efficient than an intelligent person, who
has been trained for decades to carry out this specific activity of
playing chess, and we naturally judge ourselves to be more superior
than a stacked up (well arranged) bunch of silicone circuits.
2.
That in face of the
reigning perplexity of the victory of the machine shows how humanity,
in general, has inextricably enslaved itself to the intellect,
considering it as its most precious asset. For if it were not so, the
comments would be much different. Nobody would give so much importance
to the defeat by a machine in a test that only required intellectual
ability.
The
computer won a test that just demanded reasoning, the spirit
was not required and it is exactly that that makes a human being what
he is. Deep Blue does not have the capacity to sense right or wrong.
It does not have free will. It is unable to love. It does not have an
unstoppable impulse inside itself to find out what it is, what it does
on Earth and who made it… It is a dead object, as a well-humored
journalist put it, it was not even capable of commemorating its
victory.
But
the human beings that for a long time now have buried their spirits
live, as well as the voices of their spirits - the intuition, under
the excesses of an intellect ever more tyrannical, really believe that
humanity was defeated by the machine.
And,
nevertheless, who defeated today’s intellectualized human being was
the intellectualized human being himself and this process has taken
place already for thousands of years, when he started to consider his
intellect, a mere terrestrial instrument of the spirit, as his most
important and valuable asset, even more valuable than his own spirit.
It can
be said that the majority of humanity has committed a long spiritual
suicide, debasing himself gradually, through his own will, until he
has reached this present stage which little differs from that of the
animals, only realizing that he has surrounded himself by terrestrial
things.
Deep
Blue demonstrated to the majority of present day human beings, slaves
to their intellect, the sad and insignificant role that they act out
today in Creation. Beings full of intellectual arrogance, and at the
same time so poor in spirit, capable of being shaken by the defeat in
a test that did not demand anything other than technique, which never
had nor ever will bring life by itself.
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