We can play video games simulating basketball, and yet we’ll buy season tickets to sit courtside. We can listen to every song in the world through our phones, and we still go to the live show. We see the entire history, the years of training that led up to them being able to perform with such excellence.
When we see a performance, we don’t just see it for what it is. We like the constraint of being human, and seeing what’s possible from within those boundaries. Even if computers can win every chess game, or create incredible art in every form, the fact that a machine did it is actually diminishing. Because of this, there will always be a demand for outstanding chess players, artists, and anyone pushing the boundaries of what is humanly possible. Humans have a deep appreciation for other humans doing remarkable things. Why do we still love the game so much? I think I might know. That makes it the most popular game in the world, despite the fact that computers can beat us without fail. There’s no definitive statistic of how many chess players there are, but estimates range up to one billion players globally. An average of 4.18 games start every single second on alone. The number of open tournaments increased by 37% worldwide.
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According to the most recent data from the World Chess Federation, the number of active professional players nearly doubled between 2009 to 2014. There is more interest than ever in chess tournaments. The chess community actually grew when computers learned to play. But in the opposite direction you’d expect. You might imagine that our relationship with the board game would change as a result. At first face, you might think the ability to play chess would be one of them. Now, there isn’t a person in the world who can beat their own phone at a game of chess.Īs machines perform more and more tasks, questions arise around which human skills will become obsolete. Normal computers could compete with grand masters. Within a couple of years, playing chess against a computer no longer required special equipment. Deep Blue matchup, so he was never able to see a computer pass the Turing Test: After losing the match, Kasparov was convinced there had to be a man behind the machine.ĭeep Blue’s victory may have been a fluke, or an off day for Kasparov. Turing passed away decades before the infamous Kasparov vs. While his efforts enabled a computer to play chess against a human, it was never able to win. Alan Turing, the father of computing, tried in vain to build a chess algorithm before his death in 1954. Chess was thought to be one of the last things a computer would be able to conquer. This was a stunning moment for the chess community, and the entire world. To Kasparov’s chagrin, Deep Blue became the first computer to beat a world champion in a chess match. In a six-game match, Kasparov won the first, lost the second, had draws on the next three … and lost the final round. But when they had a rematch the following year, the tables turned. The computer was no match for Kasparov, whose winning streak continued.
It was an easy yes when he was invited in 1996 to play against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM.
After beating every human in the running, he was looking for a new challenge. At the time, Garry Kasparov was undisputedly the best chess player in the world. In 1997, human dominance of chess came to a sputtering halt, and no one saw it coming. As machines perform more and more tasks, questions arise around which human skills will become obsolete.