Garry Kasparov, the world's greatest chess master, proved a better
player than IBM's supercomputer, beating the ``Great Digital Hope'' three
out of six games with two draws.
When the matchup ended in Philadelphia last month, humans rejoiced. One
wire service reported the story with these words: ``Garry Kasparov triumphed
over the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, showing that the calculating power
of a machine was not yet ready to beat the best of human brains in a classical
chess match.''
The International Herald Tribune topped the story of his victory
with this page one headline: ``Kasparov Wins One For the Human Race.''
How should we deal with this boost to human pride at the expense of a machine?
Kasparov, the Azerbaijanian fighter, represents the epitome of human chess
mastery.
Deep Blue remains a neophyte -- an inexperienced six-year-old comer -- at
this game.
In 1989, Kasparov played Deep Blue's older brother, Deep Thought, and the
human annihilated the machine.
This time, even Kasparov hyped the match as a test of the human brain's
mastery over machines, but Deep Blue shocked the world in the first game
by beating the 32-year-old who holds the highest rating in the history of
chess.
``I did not expect that it would be that tough,'' Kasparov told a press
conference after his February victory. ``And probably I was lucky to lose
game 1 because that was the best warning.''
We have to admire Kasparov;
he is the absolute best at what he does. He challenged and defeated a machine
that makes an estimated 40-50 billion calculations of possible moves in
three minutes, the time usually alloted during tournaments for a chess player
to make a move.
How many moves ahead does the human brain calculate in a game of chess?
Ten, twenty, perhaps more if one is a master.
I love chess, though I'm far from good at it. I consider myself fortunate
if I can predict the next three moves in a game.
My older brother taught me to play when I was nine years old, but I think
we treated it more as a toy; chess, checkers, Parcheesi, Chinese checkers
-- you've seen one board game, you've seen 'em all.
My sons have a similar problem now. I taught them the basic moves of the
game and bought one of those computer chess games thinking it would enhance
their game as well as mine. It has helped my six-year-old learn to move
strategically, and I think he's beaten his older brother on occasion, something
I never did when playing my older brother.
This computer chess game, however, despite being far below Deep Blue's league,
not only is a whiz when you play against it, it gives kids an animated medieval
battle between wizard queens and chuckling pawns and rooks that transform
into something like The Incredible Hulk. So my boys prefer watching this
medieval humor to the brain-work of chess.
I consider this a failure; entertainment and play has detracted from the
intellect; but then, Kasparov at times seems playful and entertaining!
I remember when watching the film ``Searching for Bobby Fischer'' thinking
all the emphasis on speed chess was distracting. I learned last month that
even Kasparov has lost to a computer playing speed chess.
Speed chess, however, is to classical chess as Dr. Seuss is to Shakespeare;
it's the same game but not with the same brain.
When I started college,
I had one of those incredible Friday schedules with a class at 8 a.m. and
a second class at 2 p.m. and nothing in between. Because I commuted over
an hour to the university, it wasn't really practical to return home between
classes so I did what any freshman with lots of time on his hands would
do, I spent about five hours every Friday in the game lounge, mostly playing
or watching upperclassmen play chess, not infrequently missing my 2 p.m.
class.
I learned quite a few moves that semester and actually became conversant
in openings, end-games and replaying the masters, but it took its toll in
calculus and chemistry class so that by second semester I completely gave
up playing chess.
A professor under whom I later studied argued vigorously that chess was
the best measure of human intelligence.
I don't support the professor's position as fully as when I was an adoring
student. Chess is many things, and it certainly involves intelligence, but
it's more.
I think even Kasparov might acknowledge that the scientists who put together
Deep Blue are likely more intelligent than he, and the benefits that accrue
from Deep Blue's ability to perform massive calculations in milliseconds
go much farther toward helping humanity than Kasparov's wizardry on a board
of 64 squares.
In one sense, Kasparov won the battle, but Deep Blue is winning the war.
One day, the computer will win a world chess championship. Should we then
bow our human heads in shame?
Let's face it, Kasparov
and perhaps a score of other living chess players will continue to match
the supercomputer. The rest of us can't beat the $39.95 version that comes
on a CD-ROM when we honestly challenge it at its best level.
In the battle of human vs. machine, the machine wins more often than the
human; we have to depend on the artists and geniuses among us to recall
that humans remain superior.
And these masters among us always seem to acknowledge that it's our inexplicable
humanness that turns to our advantage.
Even Dr. Chung-Jen Tan, the leader of IBM's Deep Blue team, acknowledges
there are human qualities that overwhelm computers: he lists knowledge,
experience, intelligence and intuition.
I would add surprise and whimsy.
My favorite quotation of the many I read surrounding Kasparov's match with
Deep Blue came from a computer scientist and mathematician at Drexel University
in Philadelphia, Jeffrey Popyack, who said: ``What a computer is doing doesn't
even approach human thought. It's working under a very strictly defined
set of rules. If there are intangibles that are difficult for the machine
to pick up, you've increased the size of the problem that the machine has
to work with.''
So Kasparov has the advantage of intangibles.
When one thinks about it, humans will always have the intangible advantage.
After all, Deep Blue in the end does only what its makers -- a collection
of human brains -- have programmed it to do, and to date none has written
a program for intangibles.
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