Between You and AI

Conclusion

IN THE SPRING of 1997, the world watched with short breath as Garry Kasparov—the greatest chess player alive—sat under immense pressure in a Manhattan conference center, visibly unsettled in what should have been his most familiar environment: a game of chess. But this time, he was not facing a fellow human: He was facing IBM’s Deep Blue, a supercomputer capable of calculating up to 200 billion possible chess positions in the three minutes traditionally allotted per move, in what was not just a chess match but a modern-day showdown of man versus machine—nearly 200 years after John Henry’s legendary battle.

Although Kasparov had defeated Deep Blue just a year earlier in 1996, this rematch was different. After an early mistake, Kasparov struggled to recover, and as the minutes ticked by, reality set in—he was losing ground, fast. Less than an hour into the game, Kasparov faced the inevitable. Leaning forward, he reached across the board to shake the hand of Joseph Hoane, one of the engineers physically moving Deep Blue’s pieces. For the first time in his career, Garry Kasparov had conceded defeat.

The Baku-born chess prodigy, a product of the former Soviet Union, was living his own John Henry moment—only this time, it was not muscle under siege; it was the mind. Like John Henry, faced with defeat at the hands of a machine, Kasparov reacted defiantly: he accused the machine’s team of receiving hidden human assistance, demanded rematches, and questioned the integrity ...