AI View of AI, Scaling Wars

The artilects, as they have been conceived so far in this book, have been largely "nanoteched" creatures. But nanotechnology may be unnecessarily restrictive and far too large a scale to be suitable for advanced artilects. It may be possible that a "femtoteched" creature could be built. Such "femto-artilects" or "femtolects" as they will be called from now on, would be vastly superior to "nano-artilects" or "nanolects," thus setting the stage for a new "species dominance war" all over again. ...

 The Three Phases of a Chess Game

A chess game, like everything else, has three parts: the beginning, the middle and the end. What’s a little different about chess is that each of these phases tests different intellectual and emotional skills, making the game a mental triathlon of speed, strength, and stamina. In the beginning of a chess game the center of the board is void, with pawns, rooks, and bishops neatly aligned in the first two rows awaiting instructions from their masters. The possibilities are almost infinite. W...