Zachary’s Notes & Highlights for Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
What the Mechanical Turk could not actually do, however, was play chess. There was no artificial intelligence driving the machine, no set of gears that mechanically determined its next move. Instead, a short-statured human pilot curled himself inside the cabinet. He was a chess expert who could observe the game by means of magnet-connected markers underneath the board that corresponded to the pieces on top—marking the locations of the pawns, the knights, the king as the game was played. The pilot maneuvered the automaton’s hand by means of levers and strings to grab the pieces and move them,
...more