On the morning of March 29 [1977], International Master David Levy telephoned
to invite me [Edward Lasker] to play a game against the computer [program CHESS 4.5] which had defeated the Russian computer
Botvinnik had helped to program. The machine would play 10 games simultaneously against human opponents.
I was of course glad to accept the invitation...
I had been convinced that it was impossible, even for the most ingenious
programmer assissted by a top master, to translate all necessary instructions into the computer's language, because some of
the thoughts running through a master's mind in certain positions are just not satisfactorily describable in that language.
Seventeen years ago I had played the first game the then leading computer had been programmed to play...
Naturally, I knew that programming computers had since then made tremendous
advances. But still, had any programmer yet succeeded in instructing a computer how to proceed when positional judgment was
required in addition to quantitative calculation, and so to arrive at the best decision? Wasn't it the degree of positional
understanding that distinguished a chess master from a weaker player? ...
[Lasker lost the game, which he analyzes]
I am still not ready to admit that a computer will ever attain master strength,
though I will concede that the Control Data Corporation [computer] plays better than I had expected anyone would be able to
make it do.
