Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

Answers

• Q03THINKING

  Can a machine exercise judgment when faced with circumstances its maker did not anticipate?

  Yes. a machine can respond to positions it was not given in advance. Every game of skill can be played by an automaton, because a machine that can choose the right move from any position of the pieces can answer whatever its opponent does.

  I endeavoured to ascertain the opinions of persons in every class of life and of all ages, whether they thought it required human reason to play games of skill. The almost constant {466} answer was in the affirmative. Some supported this view of the case by observing, that if it were otherwise, then an automaton could play such games. A few of those who had considerable acquaintance with mathematical science allowed the possibility of machinery being capable of such work; but they most stoutly denied the possibility of contriving such machinery on account of the myriads of combinations which even the simplest games included. On the first part of my inquiry I soon arrived at a demonstration that every game of skill is susceptible of being played by an automaton. Further consideration showed that if _any position_ of the men upon the board were assumed (whether that position were possible or impossible), then if the automaton could make the first move rightly, he must be able to win the game, always supposing that, under the given position of the men, that conclusion were possible. Whatever move the automaton made, another move would be made by his adversary. Now this altered state of the board is _one_ amongst the _many positions_ of the men in which, by the previous paragraph, the automaton was supposed capable of acting. Hence the question is reduced to that of making the best move under any possible combinations of positions of the men.

  Chapter XXXIV, 'The Author's further Contributions to Human Knowledge' (section 'Games of skill can be played by an automaton') · Downloaded Project Gutenberg #57532; chapter XXXIV contains the side-note 'Games of skill can be played by an automaton' and the tit-tat-to discussion.