POSTSCRIPT CHESS

The Day the Muse(ic) Died

As computers take on grandmasters and often beat them convincingly, the game of chess has undergone a significant transformation.
Mukul Sharma

program will not gain the title of International Master before the turn of the century and that the idea of an electronic world champion belongs only in the pages of a science ction book. o our chess championships really matter any longer? Okay, so in 1978, when he played against MacHack, which True, the recently concluded World Chess Championwas the best chess-playing computer at the time, he beat it ship, where an ageing 42-year-old Viswanathan Anand 2-0 in a two-game match, but the very next year he became was comprehensively creamed by Magnus Carlsen, a Norweseriously busy eating his own words. Thats because even gian prodigy half his age, had a huge number of people rivetthough he got the better of another program called Chess 4.7, ed to the board. Yet, for another huge lot of other people, the it was not before it too had been able to beat him in one game music ended long ago in New York on 3 May 1997. out of six. Suddenly, Levy was not so cocksure at all. I had That was when a very gung-ho grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, proved that my 1968 assessment had been correct, but, on the reigning world champion with the highest Elo rating in the other hand, my opponent in this match was very, very history till then, sat down to play the most important game much stronger than I had thought possible when I started the of chess in his life. Eight days and six outings later, the champ bet. Now nothing would surprise me very much, he said. was an emotional wreck. To begin with, he could barely check And it didnt. Ten years later, in 1989, when he was totally his tears. Following this, he went into a frenzy of hurling thrashed by a third program called Deep Thought, accusations against the sponsors, charging them ...a new class of Levy had no choice but to retain his newfound with having biased the entire tournament in his chess intellect was equanimity while swallowing huge chunks of his opponents favour (including the air-conditioning, created one that all-too-human hubris. if you please). Finally, he threw out a petulant has, in subsequent But to get back to the death of our music: it challenge, saying if only he could be given the years, become wasnt only because a human being had lost to chance of a rematch of 10 games, this time he streets ahead in the what was ultimately just a set of cold equations in would show them who was the real boss. games tactical and a highly-rened automaton but due to another The reason for the maudlin dramatics was strategic capacity very revealing remark made by Mr Sore Loser. simple: the man had been convincingly beaten The reason he had lost, he whined, was because it was not a 3.5-2.5 by a machine IBMs Deep Blue computer under machine he was playing against but up to four or ve expert standard tournament regulations and time control. Speaking players playing in tandem against him through the machine. to newspersons later, Kasparov is supposed to have said Now that sounds terribly like a successful Turing test. that it wasnt so much a defeat for him as it was for the whole The test, which is named after the British mathematician of humanity. Alan Turing, is based on the premise that if a computer and Actually, he should have seen it coming when, just a year a human are concealed behind screens and a human judge earlier, he had played against the same computer program. who interacts with both is fooled into thinking the machine He may have beaten it at that initial encounter but not before is a human, then the computer can be said to possess an Deep Blue had also managed to wrest one game away, which intellect equivalent to a humans. In Kasparovs case, thats was a historic rst for a computer. If that wasnt a sufcient exactly what happened. The moment he said he was not heads-up, Kasparov should at least have kept abreast of playing against a computer brain but a human one, a new something his lesser peers had been saying for years. For class of chess intellect was created one that has, in subinstance, way back in 1968, David Levy, who was only an sequent years, become streets ahead in the games tactical International Master, made a famous thousand-pound writingand strategic capacity. on-the-wall bet with four articial intelligence researchers, Which is why a lot of people dont get enthused by world that no computer program would win a chess match against chess championships any longer. Its like watching local him within 10 years. league cricket, they say. Not in the same class as that of Clearly, I shall win my...bet in 1978, and I would still win test-playing Titans. if the period were to be extended for another 10 years, he said. Prompted by the lack of conceptual progress over more Mukul Sharma (mukul.mindsport@gmail.com), former Editor of Science Today, continues than two decades, I am tempted to speculate that a computer to write screenplays and science fiction.
By the middle of the match, I found myself unprepared for what turned out to be a totally new kind of intellectual challenge. Garry Kasparov
EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

december 28, 2013

vol xlviII no 52

139