Thread by @myhistorytales

#OnThisDay May 11th 1997, 25 years ago, IBM's Chess supercomputer Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov and created one of the biggest landmark moments for Artificial Intelligence.

Join me on a history tour to revisit this fascinating iconic battle between man & machine🧵

The story begins at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA where a doctoral student Feng Hsu began developing a Chess supercomputer called 'ChipTest'.

It slowly started winning chess tournaments in USA & Feng upgraded to a new version called 'Deep Thought' in 1988

Feng Hsu graduated in 1989 and joined IBM where he further improved Deep Thought with a goal to defeat a world chess champion. They invited the one and only Gary Kasparov.

Kasparov was already world champion for 5 years then & was considered literally invincible by everyone.

Kasparov played Deep Thought for 2 games and won both quite easily. The prevailing belief that machines could never surpass human intelligence, especially in a game like chess was reinforced.

But IBM wanted to pursue the idea further.

Over the next few years, they upgraded the hardware and fed more simulations data to make an even stronger Chess supercomputer.

They ran a public campaign to choose the name and the name that won the public vote was 'Deep Blue' with a play on IBM's nickname Big Blue.

Kasparov was again challenged in 1996 for a 6 game match. The 1st game of the match, Deep Blue became the first machine ever to defeat a World Champion

Before anyone could realize the gravity of that, Kasparov won the next 3 games & won the series & put the arguments to rest

Deep Blue got an upgrade now. Its speed of thinking doubled. It could think upto 6-8 moves ahead now, sometimes going upto 20 moves ahead.

It was estimated that the ELO rating of Deep Blue increased by 70 points with every move. Longer the game, it really could get invincible.

Some chess grandmasters played it and their review was 'It's like playing against a wall'. It had the best response for every move.

But Kasparov was not just some chess grandmaster.

The final arena was set. Man vs Machine.

In Newyork. May 1997.

Game1 - Kasparov played white & went into a strong position. In the 44th move, Deep Blue went into an unintended loop in its code & played a random move 😀

Kasparov attributed it to superior intelligence & gave much weight to it & got confused but eventually recovered to win 1-0

Game 2 - Deep Blue played white but Kasparov found himself in a position where he could force a draw by perpetual check. But he missed that move and eventually resigned.

Again, he believed the computer couldn't make such errors and missed out and lost.

1-1

G3,4 - Kasparov tried some unique openings & forced Deep Blue to make sub optimal moves. But both were equally matched & the games were drawn

G5 - Kasparov looked like winning, but Deep Blue played an amazing end game to draw again

2.5-2.5!!

Points equal till the last game!!

Game 6 - The final game.

Human vs Machine.

World Champion vs Super Computer.

The world was watching. Kasparov played a dubious opening to put Deep Blue out of its 'comfort zone'

But Deep Blue made a brilliant Knight sacrifice to wreck Kasparov's defence & won!

3.5-2.5!!!

News spread all over the world. The great Gary Kasparov was beaten by a computer.

Gary called it an 'Alien Opponent' & 'As intelligent as an alarm clock' but the reality was that he had lost.

Artificial Intelligence's big moment was here.

Gary asked for a rematch next year, but IBM had dismantled Deep Blue by then & refused the rematch.

Deep Blue's hardware parts can be seen in the Computer Museum in California Today.

'Game Over: Kasparov & the Machine' is a documentary that tells this incredible story

This mega event showed the world that humans could make computers do very smart things beyond human intelligence. The AI era began.

What's the future for AI? No one knows 😃

But for now, we can enjoy this piece of history.

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