A quarter of a century ago, on 11 May 1997, a compelling argument for computer supremacy was made. For the first time in history, a computer defeated a world chess champion in a match of several games.
The IBM-made device dubbed 'Deep Blue' defeated the reigning champion, Garry Kasparov, in an unusually swift chess game. The sixth game lasted only 19 moves, while an average game takes around 40 to complete.
In the 1997 match, Kasparov had won the first game, lost the second, and drawn three subsequent games. The loss of the sixth match marked a clear defeat of a human chess master by an artificial machine. A feat that has never occurred in over 1,500 years of chess history.
Years in the making
Kasparov's defeat did not fall out of the blue. The computer that eventually outsmarted humanity has been in the works since 1985 when a Taiwanese American computer scientist Feng-hsiung Hsu set out to build a machine that could beat humans in chess.
The first purpose-built chess computer was named Deep Thought, after a fictional computer in the well-known novel 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.' Kasparov took onto the device as early as 1989, but the chess master easily defeated the computer in a two-game match.
A publicity side-project of IBM, the chess computer was in the works for several years, eventually dropping its name in favor of a more IBM-friendly 'Deep Blue.' At the time, IBM was also frequently referred to as the 'Big Blue.'
The first lost game
The second time Deep Blue challenged Kasparov came in 1996. Surprisingly, the computer beat the reigning world champion, the first time a computer won a single game in a chess match.
However, Kasparov defeated the computer in the second, fifth, and sixth games and agreed to a draw in the third and fourth games, thus claiming victory in the entire match.
Even though Kasparov was victorious, the 'man vs. machine' narrative caught the attention of the world press, and both parties agreed to another match. While it was credited as a rematch, Kasparov did not face the same Deep Blue computer he did in 1996.
According to IBM, the updated machine was capable of exploring up to 200 million possible chess positions per second. For context, typically, chess tournament rules allow three minutes to make a move. The computer was also updated between every game to compensate for its flaws against Kasparov.
Kasparov lost the much-hyped match in front of a live audience of 500 people and millions who tuned in to see whether humans can still outperform their creations.