In May 1997 the world watched as Garry Kasparov the greatest chess player in the world was
defeated for the first time by the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. It was a watershed moment in
the history of technology: machine intelligence had arrived at the point where it could best
human intellect. It wasn't a coincidence that Kasparov became the symbol of man's fight against
the machines. Chess has long been the fulcrum in development of machine intelligence the hoax
automaton 'The Turk' in the 18th century and Alan Turing's first chess program in 1952 were two
early examples of the quest for machines to think like humans - a talent we measured by their
ability to beat their creators at chess. As the pre-eminent chessmaster of the 80s and 90s it
was Kasparov's blessing and his curse to play against each generation's strongest computer
champions contributing to their development and advancing the field. Like all passionate
competitors Kasparov has taken his defeat and learned from it. He has devoted much energy to
devising ways in which humans can partner with machines in order to produce results better than
either can achieve alone. During the twenty years since playing Deep Blue he's played both
with and against machines learning a great deal about our vital relationship with our most
remarkable creations. Ultimately he's become convinced that by embracing the competition
between human and machine intelligence we can spend less time worrying about being replaced
and more thinking of new challenges to conquer. In this breakthrough book Kasparov tells his
side of the story of Deep Blue for the first time - what it was like to strategize against an
implacable untiring opponent - the mistakes he made and the reasons the odds were against him.
But more than that he tells his story of AI more generally and how he's evolved to embrace it
taking part in an urgent debate with philosophers worried about human values programmers
creating self-learning neural networks and engineers of cutting edge robotics. He surveys the
serious questions facing a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on AI creating an
essential guide for the business readers and educators he speaks to by the thousands every
year.
