Daniel Tye (right), a sophomore Honors College student, competed today against the Sjeng chess playing program in a contest held at the Reynolds Campus and Community Center at Southern Arkansas University. Jeremy Dunklin (left) moved the pieces on the chessboard for the computer program. The Sjeng chess engine won the world speed chess championship in 2008 and is installed on all new Apple Macintosh computers. In the chess match today, Daniel held his own until he made a fatal error. He failed to see that he had left his queen unprotected. The computer program "saw" the error and after that Daniel could not save the game.

Until the late 20th century few thought that machines would ever be intelligent

enough to compete against humans in complex cognitive tasks. However, as computers became smaller and more powerful, programmers began to exploit larger computer memories and increased processing speeds. They also quit trying to make computers play like humans and, instead, created "brute force" programs that could examine the consequences of potential moves far beyond the capacity of any person.

In 1997, the unthinkable happened. An IBM computer nicknamed "Deep Blue" defeated the reigning world chess champion at the time, the Russian Garry Kasparov. Since then, similar computer programs have proliferated and today only the best chess players can hope to beat them. Chess playing programs are only one sign that the science of artificial intelligence has arrived.

After, Daniel played against two of the spectators including Caleb Shaw (in white t-shirt).