A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Efforts to create a comprehensive computer game version for Go are heating up:

Feng-hsiung Hsu, a key designer of Deep Blue--the IBM computer that in 1997 defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, then the world champion--now proposes to apply the same approach to the vastly more complex Chinese game of Weiqi, known in the West by its Japanese name, Go.

That approach, known as brute-force analysis, exploits the peculiar ability of computers to calculate vast numbers of possible game outcomes while sidestepping their weakness in judgment and planning. Brute force was long derided in the artificial-intelligence community as a copout from the grand challenge of mimicking not merely the results but also the modes of human thought, but, as Hsu points out, the method has proved itself time and again, not only on the chessboard but also in such practical spheres as market analysis and weather forecasting.

In his current position as a manager in Microsoft Research Asia, in Beijing, Hsu is looking for Chinese graduate students to design, with his support and encouragement, a preliminary version of a grandmaster Go machine. If the concept proves itself valid, the next step would be to pursue the ultimate goal of beating the best human players.

The challenge is daunting. Read the article for an explanation as to why.