2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

C OMBINATORIAL EXPLOSIONS
in 1958 as “Chess-Playing Programs and the Problem of Complexity,” and marks a land-
mark in the AI literature on chess. In fact, it marks a landmark in AI in general since, by
bringing to a conclusion the early phase of the interaction with games, it provides the guide-
lines of a general theory about problems solving and its measurement through the applica-
tion of computer programs to chess that will remain stable for a long time to come.
At the beginning of their ground-breaking article, Simon, Newell and Shaw state clear-
ly what is at stake in the research: the program’s ability to play chess provides a measure
of “recent progress in understanding and mechanizing man’s intellectual attainments.” 38
The argument supporting the claim is quite simple: “Chess is the intellectual game par ex-
cellence,” they say, and
Without a chance device to obscure the contest, it pits two intellects
against each other in a situation so complex that neither can hope to understand
it completely, but sufficiently amenable to analysis that each can hope
to outthink his opponent. [...] If one could devise a successful chess machine,
one would seem to have penetrated the core of human intellectual endeavor.
(39, my emphasis) 39
First of all, the scope of the project has substantially changed, veering off from applied
mathematics to, should we say, philosophy: the researchers’ aim is no longer, or not only,
to discover useful techniques to analyze complex situations, but rather to penetrate the “hu-
man intellectual core.” This is possible because the emphasis has shifted from the general
inquiry into rationality that was specific to the original game-theoretic project to a more
specific, and yet more ambitious, search for the subjective roots of that rationality. In other
words, Simon and Newell will strive to obtain a description of the rational agent as it works,
that is, a description of the process that brings rationality about.
In this opening act, therefore, we see that the “core” of thinking, or the core of intel-
lectual behavior, is constituted by problem solving, and problem solving is well exempli-
38. Allen Newell, J.C Shaw and Herbert Simon, “Chess-Playing Programs…,” 39.
39. Note, also, that this approach marks quite a distance from the current standard interpretation of intelligence
as whatever behavior can fool a human being into thinking that s/he/it is human, e.g. the socalled
Turing test. In its early phase, AI was explicitly much more ambitious, since it was not just the
outcome of the intelligent process counted, but also, and especially, the process itself.
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