How 22 Years of AI Superiority Changed Chess

In 1997 IBM Supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov by a four games to two score in a six game series. This was a landmark moment in the development of what we might call "thinking machines", as a computer had proven itself better than the best human in what was then the world's most prestigious strategy game. The benchmark of a machine defeating a human at chess has mattered for hundreds of years. Famously, the mechanical Turk developed in 1770 thrilled and confounded luminaries as notable as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. Simply an elaborate hoax, the human-powered, not-quite-automaton fooled the public for almost 100 years.