Between the legendary chess champion Gary Kasparov and artificial intelligence, a rift broke out that has only now been settled.
It has been more than 20 years for the legendary chess champion Gary Kasparov reflects publicly on AI. His defeat in 1997 to IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue was admired worldwide. And so it was, for defeat, rather than victory. The machine had won the human being, but above all human creativity had succumbed to a computer. That of Gary Kasparov and artificial intelligence had been an agonizing duel.
The Russian chess player had already faced the IBM machine again and had won it. But this time the supercomputer had acquired even more intelligence. The result was adjusted, but Kasparov lost. He did it with the crooked gesture and ranting. There was some injustice in the way the engineers had led the computer to victory. That was the feeling the champion wanted to convey.
Maybe that’s why Kasparov is credited with a bad slime against artificial intelligence. In an interview for Wired, the champion has talked about his ideas on this issue. One of the most interesting aspects is that the chess player acknowledges that he changed his perspective at the time of defeat. “It was an unpleasant experience, but it helped me understand the future of human-machine collaboration,” he says.
Kasparov is not an apocalyptic when it comes to AI. Although there were reasons for insane animosity towards AI between Gary Kasparov and artificial intelligence, he looks for the bright side. “All technology destroys jobs before it creates them. When you look at the statistics, only 4% of jobs in America require human creativity. This means that 96% of jobs are dead, they just don’t know it yet“.
All this forcefulness is summarized by the chess player in one sentence: “I think it’s important for people to recognize the element of inevitability”. With this the champion refers to a large number of jobs that have important repetitive elements. Without a doubt, the relationship between Gary Kasparov and artificial intelligence seems to have taken a good turn.
The new era of artificial intelligence vs. humans
Today these statements of the chess player are in line with the current line of thought. Perhaps Kasparov is too forceful in his assertions. But the bottom line is the same. A lot of jobs will be lost and collaboration between humans and machines will need to be strengthened.
The confrontation between humans and machines in strategy games has been key to understanding this. From the fight between the Russian chess player and Deep Blue we have reached the game between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. Go world champion bluntly lost to DeepMind’s AI.
But this other milestone of artificial intelligence about the human being adds to a long list. AI too has defeated humans in simpler strategy games like the ladies in 1994. But also in video games of great complexity such as Starcraft or in games of ingenuity such as poker.
