The Aesthetic Factor In The Automation Of Logical Tasks: The Case Of Chess

It is common among chess players to refer to game features considered to be artistic. However, despite chess being one of the most studied fields in artificial intelligence, far too little effort has been made to automate the aesthetic judgement of grandmasters. The quest for effectiveness has prevailed, resorting to the search power of dedicated hardware architectures complemented by heuristic methods and handcrafted evaluation criteria. Recently, however, the AlphaZero program, developed according to a different philosophy, has surprised not only because of its dominance, but also because of the unexpectedness and appeal of some of its game decisions. In this article we provide an overview of the beauty criteria assumed in chess practice, and analyse how AlphaZero acquires its expertise, drawing conclusions about the role of the aesthetic impulse in rational decision making and on how artificial systems can get to perform in an original and appealing manner in logical tasks like competitive chess.