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Post: Rise of the Machines: The day the computer beat Kasparov rewrote history

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The resounding confrontation between the world’s greatest chess player and a computer program ended 25 years ago.

It is now impossible to imagine an encounter between a computer program and a chess player. Artificial intelligence has gone so far that no great master can properly oppose an intelligent machine… The same cannot be said for the end of the 20th century. Then such a duel created unprecedented excitement: from May 3 to May 11, 1997, a chess match was held in New York against the Deep Blue supercomputer of one of the best grandmasters in Russian history, Garry Kasparov.

The athlete admitted that before meeting the machine, the defeat of a person at the chessboard would mark the victory of electronic computers (computers) over our minds as a whole:

“If a computer can beat the best of the best at chess, it means that the computer can compose the best music, write the best books. I can’t believe it… If a computer is created with a rank of 2800, that’s equal to mine, I’ll put it in a spade to protect the human race. I will consider it my duty to invite him.”

It is unlikely that you will see the contempt of the opponent in these words. However, our chess player will later be criticized for precisely this.

Note that Kasparov is already fighting the computer. And he won twice:

  • In 1989, engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh began developing a machine that would begin sweeping world champions with support from IBM. But the first pancake turned out lumpy: Kasparov fiddled with his Deep Thought computer in two blitz games;

  • Seven years later, Kasparov took over again (4:2). This time the Russian grandmaster was faced with a new version of his Deep Blue computer.

However, later the developers “twisted” the computer: high-speed Deep Blue approached revenge with the Russians and estimated 200 million positions (!) per second. In addition, the organizers did their best to promote the event in the capital of world capitalism. Press attention, live broadcast… At the event, which was held on the 35th floor of the New York skyscraper Equitable Building, an auditorium was arranged for nearly 500 visitors on the lower floors and the money raised excited the participants. The winner gets $700,000, the loser gets $400,000.

Later, the documentary “Game Over. Kasparov Against the Machine” will be filmed about the events in NYC, and the play “Machine” will be staged.

Garry Kasparov during a game against an IBM Deep Blue computer in New York.  May 4, 1997 - RIA Novosti, 1920, 05/10/2022
Garry Kasparov during a game against the IBM “Deep Blue” computer in New York. May 4, 1997

The first game was taken by Kasparov, the second by chance, by the computer. The Russian missed an opportunity to save the draw. And then there were three “Worlds” and the defeat of Garry Kimovich on the 19th move after a blunder.

Final score: 2.5 – 3.5. The thirteenth world champion lost sensationally, which came as a shock to the chess community.

Immediately after the end of the match, Kasparov announced the strange movements of the computer. The same assumptions were made by experts: allegedly, the grandmasters interfered with the game of Deep Blue, which made non-linear decisions and did not fall on our chess player’s tricks. And if the machine made a mistake, it obviously “yawned”, which did not suit the work of artificial intelligence. Also, the defeat of the Russians can be explained by the fact that the machine has all the starting moves of the opponent, while the opponent does not have the so-called “opening library”.

Given the overall score tied (1-1), the trilogy could have been the logical conclusion to a massive human and supercomputer battle. But IBM rejected the idea of ​​a third meeting, and the excited public never saw the same Deep Blue.

As a result, in 2002 and 2003 Kasparov will play draws with new programs of the Deep series, after which he predicts the close dominance of computers in the chess industry. And he will not guess. For comparison: Norwegian Magnus Carlsen’s maximum score is 2882 and Stockfish’s most powerful computer program is 3551 (as of April 2021).

Source: Ria

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