The Chess Programer

In chapter 4 of "The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins talks about a chess programmer, which is the person who programs a computer so that you are able to play chess. The programmer, says Dawkins, is like a father teaching a son how to play chess. The computer cannot play chess better than the programmer, but it can beat the programmer anyways. Until now, computers are still incapable of beating humans, but this is because the machine does not have the intelligence level to go against humans. Maybe the machine knows how to play chess better, and knows how to distinguish between a loss and a win, but it won't feel sad about the loss or happy about the win. It will feel nothing and think nothing. A human would think "I'm better than him/ her at chess", but the machine has no such thought and therefore, since the programmer made the computer, then he will always be superior, or at least that’s the concept we humans have. However, just like a son, a computer could one day break free. If we take a look at humans, we can see that just because a father educated his son or daughter, it doesn’t mean that he/ she will always depend on the father. Eventually, the son or daughter will match his or her parent, and maybe even surpass them. Then why is it that we still think that a computer is not the same? For me it’s simple. The computer and the human will never be the same, and even if the computer’s artificial intelligence was greater than that of any human, I don’t think that they would take over the world or anything like that, as mentioned in Dawkins’s example. Humans have feeling, and feelings guide us through life. No artificial intelligence could give feelings to a machine, and if they could, they’d be empty feelings, which wouldn’t affect the machine’s decisions. Feelings are what differ machines from humans.