You would think it an easy task to get a computer to play chess. That might be true. But it is not easy to get the computer to play chess very well. Perhaps chess is not just some mathematical equation to be solved.True you could have the computer consider all kinds of future moves. The processing power helps with this task. However there are just too many computations to do this in real time.
The next best bet would be to get a computer to learn how to play chess well, almost like a human would do. Well IBM put its programmers to the task. The produced Deep Blue, which took on the world's human chess champion.
The programming behind the scenes with Deep Blue could occupy a whole book. Here are two tidbits. The computer program evaluates the situation of the chess board for every possible move. To speed things up, the program prunes off poor decisions from the tree of possible future moves. This helps it spend time "thinking" about the best moves.
Next time I will tell you a riddle about The Chinese Room.
