Ten years ago today, a computer beat the world chess champion in a six-game match. Since then, human champs have played three more matches against machines, scoring two draws and a loss. Grandmasters are being crushed. The era of human dominance is over.
It's not just chess. Everywhere you look—switchboards, ATMs, post offices—machines are replacing us. First they took farming and manufacturing jobs. Then they took service and office jobs. Chess was supposed to be a bastion of human ingenuity, an art they'd never conquer. Now they're conquering it. The smarter they get, the more we feel threatened.
Don't be afraid. We, too, are getting smarter, and computers are a big reason why. They're not our enemies. They're our offspring—our creations, helpers, and challengers.
We certainly needed the challenge. Chess computers, in particular, have exposed our complacency. Grandmasters used to dismiss computers as calculators, unfit for elite competition. Our vanity was so blinding that in 1997, when world champion Garry Kasparov lost to a machine called Deep Blue, he implied that the computer had received human coaching during the match.
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