Everyone is talking about AI. Some believe it presents a new world where we can rest and let computers do everything for us (because, apparently, they still haven’t figured out how the real world works), while others think it’s the end of times. In any case, and as Mafalda used to say, this is not the end, but the continuation of the beginning of society. Now we are surprised that a machine can create videos of Han Solo dancing a polka, but in 1996 the battle against AI was different: in front of a chessboard.
This love is blue like the sea, blue
In 1985, a group of students led by Feng-hsiung Hsu began developing, at Carnegie Mellon University, a computer designed exclusively to play chess called ChipTest, which later changed its name (when IBM bought the project) to Deep Thought, and finally to Deep Blue thanks to a contest in which its fans had to name the invention. And although everyone interested in it knows about its battle against Garry Kasparov in the mid-90s, the truth is that in 1989 there was another equally fierce battle that did not end well for the machine.
Deep Thought lost both games against the champion, and at IBM they couldn’t contain their frustration: Joel Benjamin, a Grandmaster, helped redesign it, convinced that it could defeat Kasparov. And so it was: on February 10, 1996, Deep Blue became the first computer capable of winning against a chess Grandmaster. However, the next day it lost. Humanity was not entirely lost. So much so that the AI did not win again (it did draw twice) and Kasparov emerged as the great victor of the contest by 4 to 2. The human race had demonstrated that a computer could not match a brain.
Until 1997, the year after, when they introduced improvements and learned from their mistakes. It is said that in those matches played between May 3 and May 11, Kasparov did not play well, but the machine did not understand the meaning of “playing well” or “being tired”: after 6 games, Deep Blue won 3.5 to 2.5. In total, the computer won two and the chess player only one. Enough to proclaim a new era for AI, which shortly after found no rival: there is no human capable of defeating a chess-specialized AI today, and the last recorded victory in an official match against a Grandmaster was, in fact, in 2005. Oops.
However, in these times where it seems you can write a prompt and have anything at your fingertips, it is the best moment to reclaim the brain, to know where each bishop can go, what moves the knight can make, what the pawn’s objective is. In other words, a classic game of chess, using your head instead of LLMs. Kasparov, by the way, is still alive at 63 and currently leads an online chess community (subscription-based, of course) called Kasparov Chess, where you can find everything from articles to interviews and podcasts. Who would have thought that years before proving that robots could beat us, Kasparov would end up using AI to earn some extra rubles?
