Chess Computers Rule the World

I've got so much to talk about on this blog that I don't know where to start. Seems kind of odd to just jump right in with a post about chess, but there it is.

"From the indigo, an even deeper blue." -- Buddhist aphorism

Back in 1997, IBM built a chess-playing computer named Deep Blue and won a match against raining world champion Garry Kasparov. It was such a huge event at the time that social knowledge spilled over past the nerd world. Ask normal people to name two things that ever happened in chess, and they'll probably name the "Match of the Century" and this.

Why was it so important? Because it was the first instance of a computer being able to beat the best player in the world. Subsequently the IBM team would be accused by Kasparov and others of cheating. Although some of the more grandiose claims are unsubstantiated, everyone agreed that IBM hadn't really built a computer to be good at chess in general, but to be good at beating Garry Kasparov. Specifically, they analyzed Kasparov's games, found his weaknesses, and biased the computer to favor lines to exploit those weaknesses. Kasparov wasn't given a chance to analyze Deep Blue's games, so the match up wasn't really fair.

Flash forward almost 10 years later, and computers are routinely beating up humans. No one even argues the point anymore; computers are simply better. After every serious match most humans play, they immediately turn to computers to analyze the game and tell them where they went wrong.

How good are the computers? This week a computer program played a tournament against the new world champion, Kramnik. You might have heard about Kramnik; he made front pages during his title match in October because his opponent accused him of cheating, because he went to the bathroom too much. America snoozes about such chess trivia, but the rest of the world watches closely.

This new program, Deep Fritz, easily beat Kramnik. It wasn't even a match; Kramnik didn't win a single game. Which is bad for humans, because this is what he had to say before the tournament: "The day will come when we will no longer have a chance against computers. If I indeed manage to beat Fritz in this match it will probably be the last time that a human being wins against a computer." Uh oh.

But what really makes Deep Fritz amazing is that you can buy it off the shelf, and run it in your own home.

Humanity has made itself obsolete.