Deep Thinking
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Deep Thinking

Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

Garry Kasparov
Public Affairs, 2017
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9

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  • Eye Opening
  • Bold
  • Eloquent

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In a famous chess match in 1996, and a subsequent, infamous rematch in 1997, world champion Garry Kasparov played against IBM’s Deep Blue, the most advanced chess-playing computer of its time. Kasparov came to understand how machines, which use deductive logic, “think” differently than people, who use inductive logic. Until artificial intelligence (AI) research gained sufficient data and processing speed, engineers focused on “brute force” search methods. This method works with a game such as chess, which follows strict rules to achieve a clear goal. Twenty years later, with the help of AI advances, Kasparov is working to develop human-machine collaborations that aid decision-making.

Summary

Chess mastery has historically been associated with superior intelligence.

Chess has a mystique for non-chess players, who associate it with concentration and memory. Chess players draw on their high-level visual and spatial thinking when generating moves. They chunk information into useful packets and assess and evaluate their positions in creative ways. They must exercise sound decision-making skills, often quickly. 

Since retiring from chess competition in 2005, author and Grandmaster Garry Kasparov has examined how chess informs the human decision-making processes. His legendary face-offs with computers during his reign as the world’s greatest chess player taught him that chess is more than competition, and he appreciates the respect that it garners. Facing down chess-playing computers named Fritz 3, Deep Blue, and Deep Junior inspired Kasparov to ask: Can machines think like humans? If computers can play chess at grandmaster levels, what else can they do?

Kasparov thinks humans and computers should work together to solve the world’s most complex problems. He believes the “transfer of labor from humans to our inventions” marked the...

About the Author

Chess champion Garry Kasparov, a senior visiting fellow at the Oxford Martin School, also wrote How Life Imitates Chess and Winter Is Coming, both in collaboration with Mig Greengard. He chaired the Human Rights Foundation and founded the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI). He serves as a security ambassador for the software company Avast. 

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