Deep thought
Sir: The article, 'The Pentagon plays chess' (28 January), contains several gross mis- conceptions and factual errors.
The Deep Thought project is not entire- ly funded by DARPA, the Department of Defense, or the Pentagon directly. The support includes industrial funding, National Science Foundation funds and, to some degree, Department of Defense money.
We very much doubt that Lieutenant Colonel Robert Simpson was aware of the nature of Deep Thought, which is com- pletely unrelated to expert systems re- search. Deep Thought is a special purpose engine for playing chess and chess only. The principal algorithms used by Deep Thought have been known for decades, and the structure of Deep Thought has no utility for battlefield navigation whatsoev- er. To quote Ken Thompson of Bell Labs, 'the only military application for Belle [a chess machine like Deep Thought] is to drop it from an airplane and kill someone'. Thomas Anantharaman Mike Browne Murray Campbell Feng-hsiung Hsu Andreas Nowatiyk
The Deep Thought Team, School of Computer Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
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