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Did a Computer Bug Help Deep Blue Beat Kasparov?
In May 1997, an IBM supercomputer known as Deep Blue beat then chess world champion Garry Kasparov, who had once bragged he would never lose to a machine.
Kasparov and other chess masters blamed the defeat on a single move made by the IBM machine. Either at the end of the first game or the beginning of the second, depending on who’s telling the story, the computer made a sacrifice that seemed to hint at its long-term strategy.
Kasparov and many others thought the move was too sophisticated for a computer, suggesting there had been some sort of human intervention during the game. “It was an incredibly refined move, of defending while ahead to cut out any hint of countermoves,” grandmaster Yasser Seirawan told Wired in 2001, “and it sent Garry into a tizzy.”
Fifteen years later, one of Big Blue’s designers says the move was the result of a bug in Deep Blue’s software.
The revelation was published in a book by statistician and New York Times journalist Nate Silver titledThe Signal and the Noise — and promptly highlighted by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.
For his book, Silver interviewed Murray Campbell, one of the three IBM computer scientists who designed Deep Blue, and Murray told him that the machine was unable to select a move and simply picked one at random.
At the time, Deep Blue versus Kasparov was hailed as a seminal moment in the history ofcomputer science — and lamented as a humiliating defeat for the human intellect. But it may have just been a lesson that as humans, we tend to blow things way out of proportion.
Many chess masters have long claimed that Kasparov was at a significant disadvantage during the match. Deep Blue’s designers had the opportunity to tweak Deep Blue’s programming between matches to adapt to Kasparov’s style and strategy. They also had access to the full history of his previous public matches.
Kasparov had no similar record of Big Blue’s performance. Because the machine had been heavily modified since he had last played it, he was essentially going in blind. That strange move was chalked up to these advantages.
The IBM team did tweak the algorithms between games, but part of what they were doing was fixing the bug that resulted in that unexpected move. The machine made a mistake, then they made sure it wouldn’t do it again. The irony is that the move had messed with Kasporav’s mind, and there was no one to fix this bug.
“Kasparov had concluded that the counterintuitive play must be a sign of superior intelligence,” Campbell told Silver. “He had never considered that it was simply a bug.”
It’s tempting to think there’s a lesson here about human nature. After all, a human mistake in the development of the software led to the machine’s victory. It’s sort of reassuring to think that a human flaw is actually what made Deep Blue successful. But it’s not clear that things would have turned out all that differently had that bug never surfaced.
Years after the final Deep Blue match, both Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, his successor as world chess champion, played against various versions of Deep Blue’s successor Fritz. But in these matches, no code modifications were permitted between games. Kramnik even had the chance to play against the software in advance of the matches, and had the right to adjourn a game until the next if it went past 56 moves.
The results aren’t that encouraging for humans.
Kasparov’s match against X3D Frintz in 2003 ended in a draw. So did Kramnik’s first match against Fritzin 2002. And Kramnik lost to Fritz due to a blunder in 2006.
These weren’t decisive victories for the machines, but the humans still couldn’t win. Even though humans can conceive of strategies to counteract the computation advantage of computers, we get tired, make blunders, and suffer from anxiety. Machines never get tired or flustered.
But the relationship between chess players and computers is actually more symbiotic than adversarial.Today’s chess masters use computers extensively as learning aids.
That said, today’s computers make Deep Blue look puny. Maybe it’s time for a rematch.
Source: http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/09/deep-blue-computer-bug
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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