PrepTest 137, Section 3, Question 25
Graham: The defeat of the world's chess champion(77 more words not shown)
The statements above provide the(11 more words not shown)
- Achess is the(13 more words not shown)
- Bchess is a(14 more words not shown)
- Ca computer's defeat(15 more words not shown)
- Dintelligence can be(12 more words not shown)
- Etools can be(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Winning at chess doesn't by itself prove that a truly intelligent machine is inevitable. Chess has a defined board and rules for its pieces. Excelling at that bounded task could leave many other intellectual challenges unresolved.
That's my first reaction to Graham. But let's hear Adelaide's actual objection before deciding where they disagree.
Adelaide shifts the credit to the programmers. In her account, people successfully worked out how to express the principles of chess and used a computer to defeat the champion. What Graham treats as the machine's mastery, Adelaide treats as the achievement of people using a tool.
What we’re looking for
So the disagreement question should track who gets credit for the victory. We shouldn't replace Adelaide's response with my broader worry about whether chess performance establishes inevitable machine intelligence. Her stated point is narrower: whose accomplishment was this?
Working the answers
- A
Neither speaker ranks chess as the best example of an activity governed by fixed principles. Graham uses it as an example, but selecting an example doesn't mean declaring it the best one. Adelaide challenges the attribution of its accomplishment, not its ranking among examples.
- B
We aren't told whether either speaker thinks chess is typical of human intellectual activity. Graham's generalization might make us wonder about representativeness, but Adelaide doesn't explicitly attack that issue. A concern we could raise isn't automatically their point of disagreement.
- CCorrect
Graham attributes the victory to the computer and takes it as evidence of what machines can master. Adelaide instead calls the computer an extension of its programmers and attributes the achievement to their successful use of it. They disagree about whether this victory should count as the computer's accomplishment.
- D
This resembles the broader intelligence question I first expected, but Adelaide doesn't deny that performing an activity according to fixed principles can demonstrate intelligence. She could regard the chess victory as a demonstration of the programmers' intelligence. Her objection concerns who demonstrated it, not whether rule-governed activity could demonstrate intelligence at all.
- E
Adelaide describes a tool successfully used in this particular activity. She doesn't say whether tools could be designed to assist with every human activity governed by fixed principles. We can't infer opposition to that broad claim merely from her insistence that the programmers deserve credit for this result.
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