20 Years after Deep Blue: How AI Has Advanced Since Conquering Chess

Twenty years ago IBM's Deep Blue computer stunned the world by becoming the first machine to beat a reigning world chess champion in a six-game match. The supercomputer's success against an incredulous Garry Kasparov sparked controversy over how a machine had managed to outmaneuver a grand master, and incited accusations--by Kasparov and others--that the company had cheated its way to victory. The reality of what transpired in the months and years leading up to that fateful match in May 1997, however, was actually more evolutionary than revolutionary--a Rocky Balboa–like rise filled with intellectual sparring matches, painstaking progress and a defeat in Philadelphia that ultimately set the stage for a triumphant rematch. Computer scientists had for decades viewed chess as a meter stick for artificial intelligence. Chess-playing calculators emerged in the late 1970s but it would be another decade before a team of Carnegie Mellon University graduate students built the first computer--called Deep Thought--to beat a grand master in a regular tournament game.