DeepBlue: AI’s Controversial Impact on the Game of Chess.
I was 6 years old when my dad first introduced to me the game of chess. At the time, I was in Grade 1, and my biggest interest in life was playing with toy cars and assembling Legos. Yet, even from an incredibly young age, there was something about the game of chess that drew me in.
It may have been the opportunity to defeat other kids my age, or the ability to flex my “intricate chess knowledge” of those around me, chess has played an incredible role throughout the past 9 years of my life. It has taught me the importance of managing my time, and planning; It has also deepened my focus, elevated my creativity, enhanced my problem-solving skills, and has shown me the significance of being resilient, and always giving it my all!
Yet, while chess has played an impactful role in my life, and for millions of others, on May 12, 1997, the game of chess changed forever. Something took place in 1997 which altered the trajectory of how the game of chess is played today!
What occurred you may ask? I guess you’ll just have to read more and find out!
The Prelude: 10 Years Before The Event
It was the year 1987, and chess as a game was growing at a pace that it had not seen before. With the first online chess software being built in 1967, the game was rapidly acquiring an increasing amount of eager individuals who were ready to test and train their intellectual capabilities!
Besides, with new and upcoming sensations like Garry Kasparov rising in the ranks, and stories of an infamous world championship series between Kasparov and Karpov, “The Young vs the Old”, “The Battle of the Soviets”, chess was at its peak, its headlines and stories were engrossing, and it looked like chess had no intention of slowing down anytime soon!
Yet, little did anyone know, that not a decade later the game would be changed forever!
The Forerunner: 5 Years Before the Event
By the Mid-1990s, close to 3,000, expert tournaments were held nationally within North America per year. With Kasparov being the reigning World Champion for the past 7years, every chess player around the world was looking to dethrone the man who was then known as the “King of Chess”. At the time Kasparov was considered undefeatable, a man who could just simply not be beaten!
Tens of Thousands of people would pay sizeable fees to get the opportunity to watch Kasparov play live! Each tournament Kasparov would win, he would receive prize fees of up to $150,000(U.S.) per tournament victory. Today, that number is worth $300,000(U.S.) To put that into perspective, Kasparov would participate in around 5–7 tournaments yearly, leading him to earn up to $1.05 Million ($2.09 Million) per year.
At the time, Kasparov was considered undefeatable, which made the future circumstance all the more shocking!
“Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance”.
- Garry Kasparov
The Lead-In: 2 Years Before the Event
It was the year 1995, and to no one’s surprise, Kasparov was still at the top! Holding the World Champion title for 10 Consecutive Years, Garry Kasparov was sitting at the very top of his chess throne. Defeating new challengers like Viswanathan Anand from India, and Gata Kamsky from Russia, Kasparov further solidified his spot as the greatest player to ever touch a chessboard.
Yet, in 1995 there were reports that a computer software DeepBlue, was training to play Kasparov in a world championship series of Man vs Machine. With Kasparov in his prime, and looking as strong as he’s ever been, you couldn’t blame anyone for scoffing at the idea, that a machine could ever beat the “King of Chess”.
Nevertheless, as more reports of DeepBlue rose through the news and various chess-based headlines, the first ceremony of Man vs Machine would go on to take place on February 10, 1996, with viewers ranging from 100 to 200 thousand people!
The Curtain-Riser: 1 Year Before the Event
Throughout the years of chess blossoming into an incredibly popular game, the year 1996 may have played the most important role. With the long-awaited event of Kasparov vs. DeepBlue, the chess community was excited to see for the first time, a matchup between Man vs. Machine.
The significance of such an event marked the rise of A.I. and Machine Learning, and how computers are now getting closer and closer to matching and possibly even defeating humans at various intellectual games. We saw it through games like Backgammon, Draughts, Scrabble, and now the integrity of a game like chess was at risk.
If the Machine came out on top, the trajectory of the game of chess, and how it would be played, would change forever!
On February 10, 1996, hundreds of thousands of chess experts anxiously watched, as Kasparov and DeepBlue set out on a 6 game series. While coming out with a rocky start, Kasparov took care of business against his gadget competitor winning the series 4–2.
This incredible victory for Kasparov solidified 2 things. One is the fact, that Kasparov was still on top, and was, in fact, the “King of Chess”, and Secondly it brought reassurance to the chess-based community that machines weren’t at the level of human intelligence yet, and that humans supremacy was still present in the game of chess!
“Winning is not a secret that belongs to very few, winning is something that we can learn by studying ourselves, studying the environment and making ourselves ready for any challenge that is infront of us”.
- Garry Kasparov
The Opening: 6 Months Before the Event
While the victory of Kasparov was still fresh in the mouths of the chess community, many individuals believed that a rematch must take place between, Kasparov and DeepBlue.
This is since Kasparov did not win convincingly against the IBM Software. After all, he won only by a short margin, and after deeper analysis, it showed that DeepBlue in fact, missed multiple winning moves throughout the series.
Many Individuals argued, that DeepBlue was in fact, not at its best and demanded a rematch between the greatest man and computer, chess could ever offer.
After much debate between FIDE, (Federation Internationale des Echecs) and PCA (Professional Chess Association), they concluded that a rematch between DeepBlue and Garry Kasparov will take place 6 months later, on May 12, 1997.
May 12, 1997: Game-Time
On May 12, 1997, approximately 350,000 people logged in live, through a virtual broadcast to watch the stunning rematch between DeepBlue and Kasparov. Many believed Kasparov would wipe the floor with the IBM software and would come out victorious as usual.
It is important to understand that in the past 10 years of Kasparov’s reign as world champion, he lost one international competition, and lost four in his entire career. Despite DeepBlue having the advantage of being able to calculate millions of possible positions per second, Kasparov was still considered the heavy-favorite.
It was yet another 6-game series, and the ending could not have been more close. Coming into Game 6, the series was tied 2.5 to 2.5, with Games 3, 4, and 5 ending in a draw. With a Game 6 approaching, winner-takes-all, the entire chess community was holding their breath to find out the result of the series.
“Describing one competitive advantage of IBM’s Deep Blue Chess computer. It has no Fear”.
- Super GM Yasser Seirawan
It may have been Kasparov’s first indication of fatigue and exhaustion, or it could be credited to Deep Blue’s infamous play, Game 6 was an absolute massacre.
Within the first 10 moves, Garry Kasparov was considered to be in a losing position, and a few moves later on move 19, tipped his king down onto the board and stormed off the stage.
In defeating Kasparov on May 11, 1997, Deep Blue made history as the first computer to beat a world champion in a six-game match under standard time controls. When Deep Blue took the match by winning the final game, Kasparov refused to believe it.
According to The Conversation, From the moment that Kasparov lost, speculation and conspiracy theories began to form. The conspiracists claimed that IBM had used human intervention during the match. Others professed that the creators at IBM had programmed DeepBlue to adapt to Kasparov’s play style.
What made it even more surprising was the fact that immediately after the series between DeepBlue and Kasparov, the employees at IBM decided to retire DeepBlue for good, and dismantled the software as a whole. The rematch which was offered by Kasparov was also denied, and IBM delayed the release of the computer’s detailed logs, as Kasparov had requested.
Yet, after a detailed and deeper analysis within DeepBlue’s software, there was no feasible or sustainable cause to confirm the accusations made against DeepBlue.
The reality of the situation was, that Deep Blue’s victory was precise because of its rigid, unhuman-like commitment to cold, hard logic in the face of Kasparov’s emotional behavior. Ultimately, DeepBlue was such an opponent that Kasparov had never played before.
“Computers don’t have any sense of aesthetics or patterns that are standard the way people learn how to play chess, They play what they think is the objectively best move in any position, even if it looks absurd, and they can play any move no matter how ugly it is.”
The Impact
According to The Conversation, What the match did, was signal the start of a societal shift that is gaining increasing speed and influence today. The kind of vast data processing that Deep Blue relied on is now found in nearly every corner of our lives, from the financial systems that dominate the economy to online dating apps that try to find us the perfect partner.
In terms of chess, the heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn’t care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again.
Takeaways
To conclude, this article was written to entertain and teach readers more about the history of chess and the impact that A.I. has had in the past 2 decades.
As a Chess-Lover myself, I had a great time writing this article, and I hope you all learnt something about Chess, and are intrigued in possibly trying to learn the game yourself!
