Workplace Lessons From History: Deep Blue Computer VS Garry Kasparov

Workplace Evolution # 3

For me this is a significant moment in workplace evolution. The moment that man was pitted against machine and tested. Forget Terminator - this was the real clash of the titans.

Chess has always been seen as suited to the intellectual elite - from the middle ages chess was part of the "Nobles" culture that allowed players to learn war strategy. Benjamin Franklin viewed chess as a key means of self-improvement believing the develoment of Foresight, Circumspection (surveying the whole scene) and Caution. Are these really the qualities that can be replicated by a computer?

"Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov" was a pair of famous six-game human–computer chess matches, in the format of machine and humans, versus a human. In this format, on the machine side a team of chess experts and programmers manually alter engineering between the games

   The video above is a link to the "Game Over" documentary about Deep Blue Vs Kasparov 

The matches were played between Kasparov and the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue with a team of IBM programmers (and chess grand-masters) who directed and programmed the machine between games. Kasparov won the first match 4–2, losing one game, drawing in two and winning three. A rematch, which has been called "the most spectacular chess event in history", was played in 1997 – this time Deep Blue won 3½–2½. Rumour was rife, particularly from Kasparov that there was human intervention at play, particularly in game two, with may experts saying that it was actually Kasparov that lost the match himself. IBM denied that it cheated, saying the only human intervention occurred between games.

What makes us human and a machine a machine?

Chess programs before Deep Blue went around killing enemy pieces at every opportunity - racking up the tally so to speak . Their human opponents understood that in chess, like war, other factors matter more such as territorial control, mobility, initiative, reach, coordination, supply lines, impregnability, and safety from decapitation. By trading material for these advantages, the humans won. That was until programmers taught the machines to recognise and consider the same factors. Essentially - we taught the computer humanistic thinking to beat us at our own game. For the first time in history Machine had triumphed over man.

Critical Moment In History? 

I wonder if this was the critical moment where the boundaries became blurred for all of us? Today we have computers doing a great deal more of the work for us, they are becoming more associated with our leisure time as well as us becoming dependent upon them. We could not have imagined the giant leap technology has made in the last 20 years. The question now is what are the next characteristics computers will take on?  By the way, Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue. Deep Blue, with its capability of evaluating 200 million positions per second, was the fastest computer that ever faced a world chess champion.