The Brute Force Of IBM Deep Blue And Google DeepMind

There are interesting parallels between one of this week's milestones in the history of technology and the current excitement and anxiety about artificial intelligence (AI). Bottom line: Beware of fake AI news and be less afraid. On February 10, 1996, IBM's Deep Blue became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov. Kasparov won three and drew two of the following five games, defeating Deep Blue by a score of 4–2. In May 1997, an upgraded version of Deep Blue won the six-game rematch 3½–2½ to become the first computer to defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls. Deep Blue was an example of so-called "artificial intelligence" achieved through "brute force," the super-human calculating speed that has been the hallmark of digital computers since they were invented in the 1940s.