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Deep (RS/6000 SP) Blue"I'm a
human being. When I see something that is well beyond my understanding, I'm afraid."
Garry Kasparov wasn't just another great chess player, the master of all grandmasters. By
universal agreement, he was the greatest chess player in history. In the spring of 1997,
at the age of thirty-four, at the peak of the long boom, he had held his world
championship for twelve years. Never once had he lost a multigame match against an
individual opponent. Never once had he displayed anything but absolute assurance in his
chess genius. His attitude toward any rival bordered on the contemptuous, a trait he
displayed again after winning, as expected, the first of six games in his heralded rematch
that May in New York against an opponent he had soundly defeated just a year before.
As the match resumed, chess experts who gathered to watch the great champion crush his foe
witnessed something so unexpected they were left speechless. They were not alone. Millions
of observers intently following the contest over the Internet via worldwide television
hookups were astonished to see Kasparov show uncharacteristic signs of confusion. First,
he displayed growing doubt, followed by dismay, despair, and loss of control. Finally, he
seemed to be having an emotional breakdown. He appeared to be terror stricken.
The first sign that the champion was on the verge of a crack-up came during the second
game. It was then that Kasparov encountered something unique in his experience. In the
past, he was always able to exploit an opponent's weaknesses by understanding the pattern
of thought being employed against him. This time he could not.That second game ended in a
draw. Another drawfollowed. Then his opponent won a game. When the contestants resumed
play on a Saturday, the match was dead even. Kasparov began aggressively, brilliantly; he
knew he was winning. His opponent fought back with a series of inspired, indeed brutal,
moves that left Kasparov visibly shaken. Grandmasters were shocked to see the champion,
for the first time, seem pitiful. He was forced to accept another draw. After a day's
break in the match, the denouement came on Monday.
Worldwide attention intensified. Television networks assigned correspondents to cover the
event for their lead prime-time broadcasts. Newspapers dispatched top writers, not just
their chess analysts, and prepared to open their front pages to report the final results.
They and millions more watching on TV and the Internet saw the great Garry Kasparov, the
consummate champion whose supreme confidence was matched only by his arrogance, replaced
by a nervous, hollowed-out player, his eyes darkened, his manner brooding. He appeared
beaten before making his first move.Kasparov grew even more dispirited as his opponent's
swift, ruthless moves drove him into a corner. In a riveting moment captured on television
screens, and later on newspaper front pages, after having lost his queen and with his king
dangerously exposed to checkmate, the champion leaned forward over the chessboard. He
placed his hands over his face and eyes, and lowered his head dejectedly. It became an
enduring portrait of human despair.
Moments later Kasparov suddenly stood up. He was resigning the game and match, he
announced. Only nineteen moves had been played.Grandmasters were amazed at the way the
champion abruptly crumbled. "It had the impact of a Greek tragedy," said the
chairman of the chess committee responsible for officiating the match. Kasparov reacted
more simply. "I lost my fighting spirit," he said. "I was not in the mood
of playing at all."
Asked to explain why, at a tumultuous news conference minutes later, he replied, "I'm
a human being. When I see something that is well beyond my understanding, I'm
afraid."
********
Kasparov's opponent had no reaction, maintaining the same state as when
the battle began: motionless, positioned inside a bare windowless air-conditioned closet,
high over the city in a midtown Manhattan skyscraper, its immense size and weight all but
unattended by any human beings.
The victor was the IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer, christened by its creators "Deep
Blue." This behemoth, whose twin metallic structures were described by one New York
Times writer as resembling nothing so much as amplifiers at a rock concert, stood six feet
five inches tall. Each of its towers weighed twenty-eight hundred pounds, for a combined
weight of over 2 ¾ tons. Internally, its 516 chess microprocessors were capable of
examining 200 million chess positions a second, or 50 billion every three minutes, all
while operating at a speed 250 times faster than desktop computers.
In the year since Kasparov had first bested Deep Blue, IBM technicians had doubled its
capacity. They also conducted near-daily brainstorming sessions with programmers,
researchers, and outside chess experts. Their efforts were rewarded by a spectacular
success. In the glow of their triumph, Deep Blue's project manager, C. J. Tan, was
magnanimous in victory and praised the dejected Kasparov. "Garry has a brilliant
mind, and he's a very brave man," Tan said. "He's a man who sees the future, who
understands where technology can take us." When asked by reporters why there had been
such global interest in the match, Tan replied: "Because it shows what technology can
do for man and how far we can take it."
********
As a news story, the match was a natural: Man versus Machine. Machine wins. As a modern
fable, it was fulfillment of an age-old dream. For centuries, scientists and charlatans
alike had envisioned the day when machines would beat humans at the intellectually
demanding game of chess. After countless failures, that day had come.
Though die-hard chess purists disparaged Deep Blue's victory as nothing more than a highly
hyped gimmick, a mechanical game without real significance, it represented something far
more important. It was a symbol of the times, a herald of the future.
Excerpted from THE BEST OF TIMES © Copyright 2002 by Haynes Johnson. Reprinted with permisison from Harvest Books, Inc. All rights reserved.
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