The Turing test is the Holy Grail of research in artificial intelligence

It is common to think that this is the rise of the India and China which will lead the evolution of employment and wages at the world level during the 21st century. The employees of the rich countries may see their incomes decline due to competition from a competent and painstaking labour in Asia, Latin America and maybe even a day in Africa. It is a way to see interesting, which mixes human issues and policies at the level of the planet. Yet, is perhaps another factor which will weigh more on the distribution

I see the world of artificial intelligence through the narrow prism of an old game in five hundred years, the game of chess. Even if it is not interested in this game, considered that he is more accomplished in the field of intellectual sport, the amazing developments he was raised in the past decade have what attention. It has long been at the centre for research in the field of artificial intelligence. If, in theory, one can consider all possible actions, the complexity of the game of chess seems to defy the boundaries of what it is possible to do. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that there are more opportunities to move the pieces on a chess game there are atoms in the universe.

During the greater part of the 20th century, it professionals have tried to design a computer capable of competing with the best players. But the hunch of a player and his ability to view and categorize the blows easily outweighed the strictly logical approach of a machine. Computers have made progress, but not to the point of the level of the best players. At least do we thought this. Since 1997 there was a historical event that shocked the world: the victory of Deep Blue, the IBM computer, on the world champion, Gary Kasparov. Very proud, it may be Kasparov himself who was more surprised so believe that IBM team had cheated. He launched sarcastically to reporters that he felt "the hand of God" behind his electronic opponent.

But IBM had not cheated. It is the combination of very ingenious software and massively parallel computing architecture that has allowed to develop an entity Silicon capable of achieving such finesse and such sophistication, to the point that the greatest players of chess (myself included) are remained stupefied to in. And since 1997, computers have made further progress, to the point that beat a chess master is no longer an insurmountable challenge for it professionals.

Chess, only a game tell you Perhaps, but let me tell you something: thirty years ago, when I was a professional player (I have represented once the United States at the World Chess Championship), I could guess the character of a player, nothing that in the light play, even if it was an amateur. And until recently, I could easily distinguish a human opponent of a machine. But everything has changed in a Flash. The machines can mimic the players the best known, including their errors, to the point that only a specialist (and in some cases, only a computer) manages to make a difference.

More than fifty years ago, Alan Turing, the father of artificial intelligence, said that all the functions of the brain could be reduced to mathematical functions and that one day the artificial intelligence could compete with human intelligence. He claimed that, on that day, a human being could not know if he spoke to a machine or another human being. The Turing test is the Holy Grail of research in artificial intelligence. For me, a game of chess is a form of dialogue and I believe that current software is not far from the Turing test.

A look at a few games of chess on the Internet, I can not so easily make the difference. But today's computers do not reach the level of Hall, the mad computer in the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, "2001: Space Odyssey", and still less that of the Androids seen in the series of the "Terminator" with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nevertheless, the level reached by computers is already quite frightening.

What will be the next step My job as teacher of economy could be threatened. I have no doubt that, in a few years, could buy a computer teacher in Pocket (maybe even with a holographic image) as easily as you can now buy a handheld computer that plays the equal of Kasparov chess.

Back in the India and China. Globalization has accelerated throughout the previous century, particularly since the 1980s. But everything suggests that it is technological change more than the development of trade which is the main cause of the evolution of wages. It is technology, not trade, which has been the great matter of the economy of the 20th century (even if there is a clear interaction between the two, for trade to disseminate technology and boost its evolution, but this is only a matter of semantics). Will it be different for the current century Or then the artificial intelligence will replace the mantra of offshoring Chess players already know the answer.