Speaker
Description
In the mathematical department of Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (Moscow) in 1960s it was decided to choose a some intellectual game to compare skills of programmers working in different countries or in other words, it was necessary to select criteria to compare AI teams. In 1960s Alexander Kronrod coined slogan “Chess is drosophila of Artificial Intelligence” and ITEP programmers started to develop chess programs. After conversations of ITEP mathematicians with US programmers they started to develop also their own chess programs in 1960s (it was done in times when “the iron curtain” was rather high). In 1967 it was organized a chess tournament between Adelson-Velskij (ITEP) and Kotok–McCarthy (Stanford, USA) programs and the Soviet program beat the American one with score 3–1. Soviet newspapers wrote about a sound success of Soviet programmers and mathematicians. It is clear that it is much more pleasant to remember your successes, but if you do not remember your defeats and do not draw conclusions from them, then victories may not come. The failure of US computer program in the chess tournament was so disappointed for American AI experts that they often remembered results of the tournament and the American failure in the competition in their books and articles. I recall also the Kronrod’s contribution in a development of structural programming and mathematical education in the Soviet Union.
