The game of chess has long been a standard problem for artificial intelligence researchers, culmunating in Deep Blue and Deep Fritz. There seems little doubt that machines are now able to routinely beat humans in chess. The same, however, is not true for the Oriental game of Go. This challenging game is in many ways far deeper than chess and has a much larger worldwide player base. Many researchers see Go as the next frontier for cognitive research now that chess has been “conquered”. The different problems and skills needed for both games certainly would seem to have the potential to result in new insights. However, recent MRI studies published last week in Nature suggest that experience and practice, not sheer mental ability, somehow are the key to both games in humans. Amateur chess and Go players do not use an area that is believed to house general intelligence, sometimes called ‘g’, US and Chinese researchers have found. The result goes against common sense. Even tho chess exercises the mind differently from Go,
the mind’s tactics as revealed via MRI for both games look similar. Go must use “different brain mechanisms we don’t understand” the researchers involved in the study conclude.