[computer-go] Can a computer beat a human?

Nick Apperson apperson at gmail.com
Tue Jan 23 13:22:10 PST 2007


This is something I have been wrestling with.  It is kind of a theoretical
question.  Assuming a program that utilizes all avaliable resources
perfectly.  It plays the best game you could ever program it to play.  How
fast would the computer have to be to beat a human?  I could see people
argue that if the program had enough knowledge it could be a pretty slow
computer (less than 100 Mhz), I could also see someone state the reality
that our brains (when you sum up the computational power of an entire
thinking brain) have way more processing power than a cluster of high
performance workstations and so technology isn't able to provide computer
hardware that would be fast enough.  I think I vastly underestimate the
human brain, but I would say a computer with perfect software, 32 GB of RAM
(so a lot) and a 300 Mhz processor (slow processor) would be able to beat a
human.  Thoughts?
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