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 A
famous Scottish University is setting up the world's first chess
Doctorate degree, which its creator hopes will lead to the development of supercomputers, capable of beating even the greatest of Grandmasters.
"My computers will be as clever as 1000
Einsteins," says course director Peter Vas, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Scotland's Aberdeen
University. A keen chess player himself, Vas is looking for around 40 graduates for the three-year
PhD. course, which also aims to push back the boundaries of Artificial Intelligence, creating computers which can think and learn by themselves.
Scotland's Aberdeen University
which is preparing to launch this unique doctoral programme in chess this year,
is hoping that former World Champion Garry Kasparov will agree to lecture.
Professor Peter Vas says the aim is to produce chess grandmasters, and to develop intelligent computers that can learn from their own experience.
Applicants, who should be skilled in computing and mathematics, may be asked to play a
Chess Grandmaster as part of the entrance procedure.
 "I am not saying they would have to defeat Kasparov, but when I
analyze this game I must see potential," said Professor Vas. He says Kasparov's agent is optimistic
that the ex-world champion will agree to give lectures. More than a dozen people have already applied, and there has been interest from as far afield as Brazil and the United States.
"It's about strategy and tactics, and how you can get a chess computer that can gradually learn by itself to become the strongest intelligent machine in the world," said Professor Vas.
He said the idea was to design the computers using techniques from the study of artificial intelligence.
"They will be computers acting like human beings, not acting on the basis of binary algorithms like all computers today," he added.
Multinational companies have shown interest in sponsoring the course, because success in developing the new software would have applications for all kinds of computer games.
Professor Vas, who was born in Hungary, said he had been testing his ideas on his own sons, aged 10 and 12, who in a short time had become two of the best players of their age in Scotland.
Kasparov showed his interest in chess computers by taking on the best available during his reign as world champion.
These games culminated in the duel between Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue. The human won the first match in 1996 - just as he had beaten its predecessor Deep Thought in 1989 - but lost the second in 1997.
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