Tuesday, September 09, 2008

PayPal Guy Wrong on Chess

PayPal founder Peter Thiel, whom I mentioned here, spoke to Michael Arrington (founder of tech blog, TechCrunch) at the TechCrunch50 Conference which is now taking place in San Francisco. They talked about technology, finance, CEO pay and, of course, AI.

Here's an interesting tidbit on chess as reported by CNet:

Thiel, a ranked chess player in his younger years, has interesting thoughts about artificual [sic] intelligence and its benefits and dangers. While people used to think that Chess would never be mastered by a computer since it was a reflection of innate human intelligence, clearly people were mistaken about that. And it's instructive, he says. "How many domains are like Chess, where they can be quantified?" Thiel asked. "My thinking is that there are probably more than we think."

Responding to a question from the audience about computers taking over the world: "My own sense, it's not going to happen. But I was wrong about chess."

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