Garry Kasparov’s Deep Thinking (UK) (US) is subtitled “Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins”, although on that particular point it is not especially profound. Nevertheless I’ve found it well worth a second read.
The book has two particular strengths. First, the account of account of Kasparov’s battles with IBM’s Deep Blue, which reads like a thriller. Kasparov is clearly very sore about how IBM behaved, although he has rowed back from outright claims of cheating. What he does believe is that IBM made a big song and dance about how Deep Blue was going to advance the state of artificial intelligence – while all IBM really wanted was the PR coup of victory. Victory, it turns out, was a scientific dead end. He quotes the late computer scientist Alan Perlis: “Optimization hinders evolution”. In the case of computer chess, Perlis’s maxim describes researchers who chose pragmatic short-cuts for quick results. Deeper, riskier research was neglected.
This leads me to the second strength: it really is a wonderful history of computers in chess – although my hardback edition is from 2017 so Kasparov has nothing much to say about AlphaZero. I enjoyed it a lot, even though my chess knowledge is pretty ropey.
UK: Blackwell’s – Amazon
Catch up on the first season of my podcast “Cautionary Tales” [Apple] [Spotify] [Stitcher]
My book “Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy” (UK) / “Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy” (US) is out now in paperback – feel free to order online or through your local bookshop.