How computers changed the way we think (also to play chess)

We are no longer who we once were. Technology runs through us from the moment we open our eyes in the morning, when we try to turn off the alarm of the smartphone, until the very moment we close them at night, when we send that last message on WhatsApp.

Most of our life is influenced by the almost continuous use of technology. What repercussions does this new reality have on our human nature? Are our cognitive processes being altered? How are we changing? Do we know where we are going?

How technology modifies our cognitive processes

In the last decades, great efforts have been made to try to answer these and other similar questions from very diverse areas of research, especially from cognitive science.

For example, a team of psychologists from the University of Philadelphia (USA) led by Henry Wilmer conducted a review in 2017 in which they analyzed the empirical work carried out to date on the relationship between mobile phone use and cognitive functioning. .

Regarding care, the authors concluded that “in general, the evidence points to a negative relationship between the use of smartphone and attention ”, although immediately afterwards they recognized limitations in the studies, since most of them were based on correlational and self-report measures.

Similarly, another team of psychologists showed that being exposed to receiving notifications (news, messages on social networks, email) while performing a task reduced the ability to focus and impaired the way to solve it. It’s not that technology interrupts what we do, it’s that we no longer interrupt technology when we try to do other things.

Wilmer also reviewed empirical results on the relationship between the use of technology and memory. One of the most interesting was the so-called Google effect The digital amnesia, a term coined in another study, now classic, carried out in 2011. The authors showed that having expectations about the possibility of accessing a certain source of information in the future can make us less inclined to store and encode the memory in long-term memory. information available from that source.

Another interesting example is the one that has to do with spatial memory. Some work has shown that over reliance on the use of GPS while driving, especially when guided by the voice option, can affect the way we represent ourselves and orient ourselves in the middle.

One way to mitigate the potentially negative consequences is to configure the application to have to mentally perform the rotations. For example, by making the map always face north instead of allowing the application to rotate automatically.

And what about thinking, decision making, and problem solving? Is the use of technology modifying these processes in any way? Let’s see it with a particular case: that of chess practice.

How computers changed the way we played chess

All the positions that chess players must face are the result of their own decisions. There is no room for chance. One must calculate as precisely as possible which are the movements that maximize his chances of success, while predicting the movements of his opponent to try to neutralize their possible attacks.

Today, that calculation capacity has increased in an unimaginable way just a few years ago, thanks to the availability of powerful chess engines such as Stock Fish or Alpha Zero. These are capable of analyzing and evaluating, in just one second, millions of potential movements.

This new reality has important consequences for the way chess is practiced today. Especially (but not only) at the elite level. In the past, the usual way to analyze and evaluate a particular move or a game as a whole was through joint reflection and evaluation between both players. It was not always possible to determine exactly whether the movement being analyzed was the best of all possible. Today this is different. The computer can determine the best option with enormous precision and report on the spot, while the game is being analyzed.

The image below represents a typical position of the scope of the center, an opening not very frequent in elite chess (see image 1).

The identical size of the two bars that we find on the side of the image, in white and black respectively, inform that the position is equal for both players.

If at that moment White decides to bring the queen to square c3, we see that the black bar grows until it occupies almost the entire image (see images 2a and 2b).

This result informs that the Qc3 move has been a serious error on White’s part and that the game is won for Black.

Indeed, if now Black takes the bishop to square b4 they win the game, since White cannot remove the queen (it is nailed).

This is a simple example of how the computer can help the player to become aware of their mistakes and influence their decision making. There are much more complicated examples where it is difficult to understand what computer calculations are, even for grandmasters.

Another interesting example of how computers influence the way of thinking and making decisions in chess is the one that refers to machines as a form of extended memory, with an immense capacity to save and store games.

Image 3 reports the final result (win for White, draw or win for Black) based on the openings or initial moves made in more than 500,000 games played only by grandmasters.

It can be seen that the most frequently used opening among grandmasters is 1.e4, with more than 250,000 games played, while the one with the highest percentage of success is 1.h4, an opening that has barely been played in 12 times, but where White has won 50% of the time. Knowing exactly what the distribution of the results is based on the openings played can be very relevant information when deciding to play one or the other movements.

What future awaits us?

Day after day technology seems to increase its influence in each of the areas of our existence, especially in terms of our cognitive processes.

In many cases, the effect of the use of technology is undoubtedly positive. As already described above, no one doubts that the use of computers has improved decision-making in chess.

The same occurs in many other areas of enormous social relevance, such as the diagnosis of diseases and the prevention of traffic accidents.

However, the continued use of technology carries enormous risks, many still unexplored in depth. In addition to those already mentioned previously in relation to attention and memory, we find other examples of great importance that should be studied in detail.

For example, phenomena such as the personalization of the content and information that we receive when we surf the Internet have been related to others such as the ideological polarization or radicalization of ideas, whose social consequences pose a huge challenge for today’s democracies.

Technology requires responsibility, both from the design itself and from the use we make of it. Some platforms and institutions, such as the Center for Human Technology or the Tech Transparency Project, demand a technology that serves the interests and needs of people, instead of taking advantage of limitations, fundamentally cognitive, to take advantage of them.

Campaigns such as #OneClickSafer, where it is proposed to eliminate from social networks the function that allows unreflective sharing of any type of information, regardless of its quality and veracity, are directed in this regard. It is true that we are no longer who we once were, it is in our hands to have a technology that allows us in the future to be who we want to be.