January 31, 2003
Man Vs. Machine
Gary Kasparov, sometimes hailed as the greatest human chess player ever, is duking it out with another computer, Deep Junior. This is a grudge match, since Deep Blue, Deep Junior's ancestor(?) beat Kasparov in 1997, and the man alleged cheating. I can't wait for the Scorcese treatment in a few years; I'm sure blood, guts, and transistors will go flying in an outburst of creative license.
Kasparov won the first match, drew the second and lost the third. So while they're tied, mighty mo is in Deep Junior's corner. (Somebody is going to have to have a talk with those IBM guys about how to name a product.) If I were a traditional pundit, I'd draw a straight line and conclude that Kasparov won't win any more games. But I have too much organism pride (does that make me an organist?), and I want the man to beat the machine.
Posted by Kevin Murphy at January 31, 2003 08:21 AM | FunActually, I happen to agree with Gary on the charge of Deep Blue cheating. From what I recall, it seems that the Deep Blue team was "tuning" Deep Blue during the match. Doesn't really seem like a man-vs-machine match if the machine has human fingers on it, does it? (Much less a team of them!)
Speciests, or even organicists (hmmm) take heart: Though computers can currently play a rather kick-butt game of chess, they're clueless about Go.
Posted by: Tim at February 5, 2003 04:29 PM
