If you've read Kasparov on playing chess with machines, he has some really interesting observations on practical and philosophical aspects of man vs. machine. H

If you've read Kasparov on playing chess with machines, he has some really interesting observations on practical and philosophical aspects of man vs. machine. His most interesting observation is that it's neither the best human grandmasters, nor the best chess machines, but rather the best algorithm for humans working with machines that tends to win. It does make for nice headlines when a machine like Deep Blue or Watson trounces the best human in a particular artificially-constrained test. But in the real world of unconstrained problem sets and complexity, my money is on the proper pairing of human and machine rather than one obtaining any lasting advantage over the other.