It was once supposed, perhaps not unreasonably, that in order for a computer to play chess at grandmaster level, it would have to be endowed with a high degree of general intelligence.39 One might have thought, for example, that great chess playing requires being able to learn abstract concepts, think cleverly about strategy, compose flexible plans, make a wide range of ingenious logical deductions, and maybe even model one’s opponent’s thinking. Not so. It turned out to be possible to build a perfectly fine chess engine around a special-purpose algorithm.40 When implemented on the fast
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