The Gazette (Montreal)
March 4, 2005 Friday
Final Edition
Checkmate: Machine defeats man: Chess grand master takes on Deep
Blue. Stylish documentary raises questions about Garry Kasparov’s
1997 loss to IBM supercomputer
by JOHN GRIFFIN, The Gazette
A knowledge of chess is useful but not essential to the enjoyment of
Vikram Jayanti’s stylish new NFB and Alliance Atlantis documentary
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.
In 1997, Garry Kasparov took on an IBM computer named Deep Blue in a
chess tournament and lost, in an event that has been described as “a
blow against mankind.”
How did it happen? A year earlier, the man considered the greatest
grand master in recorded history had accepted a “scientific”
challenge by IBM to play against one of its computers, and wiped the
floor with it.
The “half-Jewish, half-Armenian” Russian graciously offered a
rematch. Little did he know IBM would throw almost limitless
resources at constructing a 11/2-tonne supercomputer dubbed Deep Blue
specifically configured to deal with the mind-blowing numbers
involved in the game.
It was dubbed the “brute force” approach to combating the nimbleness
of the human brain and it attracted wide international public
interest in the six-game/nine-day New York smackdown.
Game Over combines actual tournament footage and memories of those
involved with a return visit to what Kasparov calls “the scene of the
crime.”
In his mind, no more or less paranoid than others playing a devilish
game at levels unimaginable to mere mortals, IBM cheated on the
match. Specifically, in the second game, Deep Blue made a move too
human to have come from a programmed digital brain.
Kasparov is convinced a human interfered with the process in one of a
number of rooms locked and off-limits to the Russian and his team.
The film cites the unwillingness of the IBM mob to share any
information about Deep Blue – “Garry thought it was about science and
research, and played right into their hands.”
It is also noted after Kasparov had a meltdown to lose the last game
and the tournament, IBM wonks immediately dismantled the machine
they’d worked a year on constructing.
“It’s like going to the moon, looking around and coming home with
nothing to show for it,” someone says about the shelving of such an
intensive project.
Still, things might have worked out for the company in the long run.
Its shares jumped 15 per cent after the win, and a giant considered
an also-ran in the computer business became a player.
As for Kasparov, he recovered enough to continue his extraordinary
career, but Game Over makes clear something has been lost. And it’s
more than a game.
“Human beings are weak in everything but intelligence,” the grand
master explains. “Now something comes along that says ‘I might be
smarter’ – and it’s a machine.”
Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
Rating 3 1/2
Playing at: AMC cinema.
Parents’ guide: required viewing for chess nuts, some language.