Technology has helped mankind rule the earth. Technology has ruled with mankind. Someday, technology may rule mankind.
This is the thought that has been disturbing mankind for generations. Yet we continue to support and improve it. Partly because of the need; probably because of our pride in possessing brains and, probably still, because of human discontent.
In 1996, people all over the world were stunned by Deep Blue's victory over Garry Kasparov in the first game of their 6-game chess match. How on earth can a machine defeat its master? Fortunately, Kasparov went on to beat Deep Blue in the over-all match. He sure saved our butts. Mankind=3, Machine=1, and the rest were draws. However, the Deep Blue team is plotting revenge. They have come up with a computer more powerful Deep Blue and more than ready to challenge Kasparov. This could be the world's darkest hour.
Deep Blue descended from Deep Thought, the first chess-playing computer. It was created in 1988 by a team of Carnegie-Mellon graduate students. It contains 250 chips and 2 processors on a single circuit board and is capable of analyzing 750,000 positions per second (10 half moves ahead). It has an international performance rating of 2450 placing it in the lower ranks of the world's Grandmasters.
In 1988, it defeated a Grandmaster in a tournament. In 1989, it was updated into an experimental 6-processor version capable of searching more than 2 million positions per second. It went on to play a 2-game exhibition match against the world's top player Garry Kasparov and was beaten. In 1993, it defeated Judith Polgar, the youngest Grandmaster in history and the strongest female player in the world. Finally, in 1994, it won the title of International Computer Chess Champion.
Then came Deep Blue. It was developed by Feng-Hsuing Hsu, Murry Campbell, A. Joseph Hoane Jr., Gershon Brody and Chung-Jen Tan, a team of IBM specialists. Joel Benjamin, an International Master, also worked with them as a consultant. He helped design Deep Blue's new strategies.
Deep Blue is a 32-node IBM PowerParallel SP2 high-performance computer. Each node of the SP2 makes use of one microchannel card containing 8 loyal VLSI chess processors working in pairs. Its programming code is developed in C and it runs under the AIX operating system. It also contains an opening database which provides the system with the games Grandmasters played over the last 100 years. Lastly, it has an endgame database activated when only 5 chess pieces are left. All in all, it is a scalable, highly parallel system capable of calculating 50 to 100 billion moves within 3 minutes (the time allotted for each player's move in classical chess). In short, it's very powerful.
After the second Deep Blue was "born," it played an exhibition against its predecessor. The game went on in the boring old way for 15 moves. No surprises, just plain safe. Then on the 16th move, Deep Blue Jr. made a bold move, advancing the knight's pawn 2 squares. This loosened Deep Blue Jr.'s kingside defense and swallowed up the pawns of Deep Blue Sr., which resigned 18 moves later. Boy, was that heavy.
Kasparov shouldn't be afraid of Deeper Blue just because it has 512 processors; capable of reviewing 200 million chess positions per second. He shouldn't be afraid just because Deeper Blue is more powerful than Deep Blue and is more potent in kicking butt. He shouldn't be afraid just because chess-playing computers don't flinch while he, on the other hand, is sweating his skin out. Come to think of it, he shouldn't be afraid at all; it's just a computer.
Humans after all, were the ones who brought about their presence. Which means we are still more intelligent than they are. Kasparov couldn't have beaten Deep Blue if he didn't change his style, which goes to show how well we can innovate under pressure. Computers can't do that. Moreover, we are capable of following our intuition and judgement (which computers don't have at all) and we learn from our mistakes (which computers can't do unless they are improved by the superior humans). See, we don't have anything much to worry about. Well, unless of course the Deep Blue team comes up with another idea. Then we can start worrying.
References:
KASPAROV vs. DEEP BLUE: the Rematch
at www.chess.ibm.com
KASPAROV vs. DEEP BLUE
at www.chess.ibm.park.org