Gary Kasparov
Anyone who follows chess might well be aware that 1997 was a significant year in the history of chess. Yes, something unthinkable happened in that year. For the first time, a machine defeated the smartest and, arguably, the best human player on earth.
Deep Blue, the best among the chess engines made till 1997, was created by impassioned engineers at IBM who believed that, one day, they would be able to develop a machine which would have the capability to defeat the smartest human player of the game. Nonetheless, the task of writing the computer program was never simple and the engineers took many decades to develop the program. Engineers tried their best to increase the program's computational ability by attaching multiple processors to the machine. Though the initially developed chess programs were not upto the mark, they started to beat the International masters and grand masters occasionally after 1980. This spurred the hope of relentless engineers who sincerely believed that their dream of a computer program beating the best human player might indeed come true.
In 1996, IBM thought Deep Blue was ready to challenge Garry Kasparov. He accepted the proposal to play a serious of matches against Deep Blue. Though he lost the first match, he recovered from 2nd match onwards. He knew very well that computers were machines and would not be able to analyze the game like a human brain. He exploited these weaknesses of the machine and took advantage of them. Finally, he won the match against Deep Blue, reinforcing the most prevalent saying - "Machines cannot be smarter than human brain".
The makers of Deep Blue accepted the defeat in grace and started to look into the program to better the algorithm. They increased the program's computational ability exceptionally and trained it to play like grandmasters so that it plays like a human player. They even took help of grandmasters to provide human like intelligence to the machine.
In 1997, Kasparov was approached by IBM for a rematch with Deep Blue. He accepted the proposal. He never knew that he was going to play a series of matches which would go into the pages of history and raise questions about supremacy of machines over human brain. Gary Kasparov won the 1st match against Deep Blue easily. He even went a step forward and commented "Its a machine...Its stupid", referring to Deep Blue. However, the computer came back strong the next day, eventually defeating the world champion. Kasparov could not anticipate a few moves by Deep Blue. Many people including him were baffled and completely stunned by the way Deep Blue played a few moves in the game. They were just not ready to believe that Deep Blue was playing positional chess rather than tactical chess. (Let me explain here what positional chess is. Positional Chess is the strategy employed mostly by humans. It enables a player to capitalize on a position which is slightly advantageous even if there are no clear attacking lines. On the otherhand, machines usually play tactical chess. They analyze each and every possible move by brute force method and play the move providing maximum advantage. Playing positional chess requires thinking and experience whereas playing tactical chess requires fast computational ability.) Many people could not believe that Deep Blue, unlike a machine, played a move which is typically played by grandmasters. The move was strategic, not tactic.
Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue (1997)
The next three matches were drawn. The scores stood at 2.5:2:5 before the last game. Kasparov lost the last and final match due to a few wrong moves. Everyone was stunned. The unthinkable had indeed happened. A machine had managed to beat the world champion.
During his interview in post-match conference, he hinted it was hard to believe that he was playing against only a machine. Many others also suspected that there might be a human player involved in the battle who was helping Deep Blue. Few more incidents also raised serious and uncomfortable questions about this man vs machine battle.
(1) After Deep Blue defeated Kasparov, IBM shut the computer down as if its mission was accomplished. Kasparov was very keen to know and implement the human like aspects of Deep Blue in Fritz, the engine which he uses to practice Chess. The question how Deep Blue was trained to play like a human, remained a mystery for long.
(2) Gary Kasparov was not given the logs of match 2 even after his repeated requests to IBM.
(3) IBM refused for a rematch when Kasparov wanted to play against Deep Blue after 1997 match.
Its still a mystery what really happened in the fateful man vs machine battle ...whether the match was played fairly (i.e man vs machine only)......whether the machine was indeed smart enough to defeat the world champion. However the event had significant repercussions. Computer programming for chess has come a long way since then. Recent chess engines, such as Fritz 12 and Rybka etc, possess the capability to play strategic chess like Deep Blue even if they run on a single processor. The strides made in last decade makes us believe that the day is not faraway when computers would indeed be able to think like humans. Thanks to the continuous efforts by enthusiastic computer programmers.
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