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In 1997, Garry Kasparov, widely regarded as the world's greatest chess player, was defeated by a computer. But how much did that reveal about the 'brainpower' of machines?

In 1997, Garry Kasparov, widely regarded as the world's greatest chess player, was defeated by Deep Blue, a computer. But how much did that reveal about the 'brainpower' of machines? Tim Harford explains by delving into the history of algorithms. They've been used by mathematicians and scientists for millennia, but have acquired a new level of power and importance in the digital age.

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Mon 24 Feb 202004:50GMT
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Image credit

Garry Kasparov ponders his next move against the IBM Deep Blue computer in New York in May 1997 (Credit: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

Sources

Christopher Steiner Automate This New York: Portfolio Penguin 2012; Claude E. Shannon"A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits". Trans. AIEE. 57 (12): 713–723. 1938

.laude E. Shannon “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess” Philosophical Magazine, Ser.7, Vol. 41, No. 314 - March 1950.

Douglas Hofstadter Gödel, Escher, Bach New York: Basic Books 1979

Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov Replays His Four Most Memorable Games, New Yorker, from around 5 minutes in.

James Somers “The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think” The Atlantic November 2013

CloudCV: Visual Question Answering

Hannah Kuchler “Google AI system beats doctors in detection tests for breast cancer” The Financial Times 1 January 2020

Daniel Susskind A World Without Work London: Allen Lane 2020; AI Index Report 2019

Garry Kasparov “Chess, a Drosophila of reasoning” Science 7 December 2018

Pedro Domingos The Master Algorithm London: Penguin 2017

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