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Man versus Artificial Intelligence: From Deep Blue to DeepMind in 20 Years


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Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov and DeepMind's CEO Demis Hassabis discuss Kasparov's new book "Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins," his chess match with IBM Deep Blue, and his thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence in the

Credit: New World AI

In May 1997, the world watched as Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player in the world, was defeated for the first time by the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. It was a watershed moment in the history of technology: machine intelligence had arrived at the point where it could best human intellect.

It wasn't a coincidence that Kasparov became the symbol of man's fight against the machines. Chess has long been the fulcrum in development of machine intelligence; the hoax automaton 'The Turk' in the 18th century and Alan Turing's first chess program in 1952 were two early examples of the quest for machines to think like humans — a talent we measured by their ability to beat their creators at chess. As the pre-eminent chessmaster of the 80s and 90s, it was Kasparov's blessing and his curse to play against each generation's strongest computer champions, contributing to their development and advancing the field.

Like all passionate competitors, Kasparov has taken his defeat and learned from it. He has devoted much energy to devising ways in which humans can partner with machines in order to produce results better than either can achieve alone. During the twenty years since playing Deep Blue, he's played both with and against machines, learning a great deal about our vital relationship with our most remarkable creations. Ultimately, he's become convinced that by embracing the competition between human and machine intelligence, we can spend less time worrying about being replaced and more thinking of new challenges to conquer.

In this breakthrough book, Kasparov tells his side of the story of Deep Blue for the first time — what it was like to strategize against an implacable, untiring opponent — the mistakes he made and the reasons the odds were against him. But more than that, he tells his story of AI more generally, and how he's evolved to embrace it, taking part in an urgent debate with philosophers worried about human values, programmers creating self-learning neural networks, and engineers of cutting edge robotics.

Demis Hassabis
"It's a really special privilege and honor for me actually to talk to Garry Kasparov. In my humble opinion, the greatest chess player of all time and I've really enjoyed his book which I reviewed recently and I was impressed with Gary's understanding of artificial intelligence and the latest advances in that so you know it's going to be great to talk about that as well as chess today.."

Garry Kasparov
"Thank you very much for your review and over the album protection against all the tech guys that try to criticize me for not being an expert."

Demis Hassabis
"I'm glad if I can be of use. Before we get talking about Deep Blue Match and I'm sure everyone's going to want to hear about your insights on that and also machine learning more generally and I wanted to begin by asking you about growing up as a chess champion in Soviet Union. Did you always want to be a chess player world champion yet did you consider anything else or were you from a very young age decide that this was your path?"

Garry Kasparov
"I learned how to play chess when I was five or six. Sorry I couldn't give you an exact moment. Nobody was there to tweet about this. This was late 68 literally 69 watching my parents trying to solve chess problem and them I love the game at first sight and then ever since and I'm still all over the game and there I could feel that was a match made in heaven and everybody around also could see that chess was a perfect fit for my mind skills."

 

From new world AI
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