Resumen
In commenting on the recent chess match between chess player Garry Kasparov and supercomputer Deep Blue, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has avoided speaking of artificial intelligence, focusing almost exclusively on its large parallel processor that examines about 1.8 X 1010 positions in each three minutes. IBM promotional literature even proclaimed, "The power behind Deep Blue is an IBM RS/6000 SP system finely tuned with customized processor chips designed by IBM Research. This combination, in addition to expert knowledge, enables users to take on larger problems by analyzing a greater number of possible solutions." Deep Blue's branching factor at each move averages perhaps four or five, after allowing for various procedures, like the alpha-beta algorithm and special continuations that are selectively incorporated into the search. Hence, although the speed of Deep Blue was increased by a factor of two during the year between matches, the search capability increased by only a fraction of a ply. Yet all grandmasters watching the match commented on the qualitative change in its play, especially its ability to play differently in different kinds of positions.

Resumen
The article presents an overview of knowledge discovery or the computer techniques that, in the broadest sense, automatically find fundamental properties and principles. Dealing with more comprehensive, non-oversimplified, real-world types of data, such as mixed data types, is a key direction for the future. It emphasizes the aspects of knowledge discovery that are shared across the various fields of science. Although computers can't crank out major scientific findings every day, they promise to accelerate the rate of significant scientific discoveries. Selected Techniques covers four especially important techniques for knowledge discovery. The notion of computers automatically finding useful information is an exciting and promising aspect of just about any application intended to be of practical use. Replacing such creative human activities as sorting through it all with a computer represents a grand human endeavor. Based on a simulation of the architecture and functioning of the human brain, neural networks are being applied to many types of problems, including pattern recognition, process control, and real-world prediction of real-world phenomena