Deep Thinking

Starred review from April 15, 2017
Former world chess champion and human rights activist Kasparov (Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, 2015, etc.) offers an optimistic view of humankind's relationship with machines. "With every new encroachment of machines, the voices of panic and doubt are heard, and they are only getting louder today," writes the author, who famously lost a chess match against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997. Since his retirement from professional chess, Kasparov has used his experience as a window on human-machine decision-making, in talks to business groups and in work as a visiting fellow at the Oxford Martin School. In this intelligent, absorbing book, he manages to both tell the story of his encounter with IBM's machine (with the "speed and depth of brute force search" to exploit human mistakes) and celebrate the untold coming benefits of smart machines. His detailed inside account of Deep Blue reflects on his own poor play and the likelihood that IBM gave its machine unfair advantages. As he said at the time, "I do not blame IBM, I blame myself." Kasparov also notes how chess-playing computers get stronger, change their openings, and pay no attention to "the competitive and psychological aspects of chess." Observing that most of us will be as disconcerted by driverless cars as he was by chess-playing machines, he urges that we take advantage of the proliferation of computers as they assume many roles of lawyers, bankers, doctors, and other professionals. "It's remarkable how quickly we go from being skeptics to taking a new technology for granted," he writes. Overreliance on machines may be dangerous if you want to innovate rather than imitate, but listening to them allows you to overcome your emotional biases. Given honest data, machines can "make us into better decision makers." Thoughtful reading for anyone interested in human and machine cognition and a must for chess fans.

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May 1, 2017

Tapping into his longtime interest in artificial intelligence, Kasparov (How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom), who is considered one of the greatest chess players of all time, pitted his expertise against various computers to help develop a machine that could beat any human opponent. Since the winning machine looks at many potential moves and picks the best one based on an evaluation function fed into it by its human developers yet is itself unaware it is playing chess, the author concludes that this effort may have done little to advance the search for true artificial intelligence. However, the heart of this book is Kasparov's postmortem of the 1997 match in which he lost to IBM's Deep Blue. He attributes the defeat partly to his own mistakes but primarily to what he views as the unsportsmanlike and unethical actions of the IBM team. In so doing, he offers some compelling insights about chess and life. VERDICT This thought-provoking account should find a large audience among those who want to learn more about chess, artificial intelligence, or Kasparov himself.--Harold D. Shane, Mathematics Emeritus, Baruch Coll. Lib., CUNY

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2017
The world chess champion from 1985 to 2000, Kasparov is best known as the first player to be defeated by a computer, IBM's Deep Blue, in 1997. Kasparov, with coauthor Greengard, recounts that experience with a broader purpose, to present his encounters with computers as training aids and competitive opponents in elite chess as an analogue for how artificial intelligence affects human occupations in general. Kasparov describes the development of chess-playing computers, which until the mid-1980s could be soundly beaten by human grandmasters, including Kasparov himself, but which, as processing power increased, became formidable opponents. As Kasparov recounts in arresting detail what it felt like to compete cognitively with a machine, he extrapolates his experience into an optimistic perspective on how computerized intelligence can enhance rather than overwhelm human brainpower, and instead of only eliminating jobs and opportunities, can actually generate them. Noting that Deep Blue's victory failed to render chess obsoleteit's as popular as ever as pastime and professionKasparov encourages readers to adapt rather than surrender to a transforming tool, ever-evolving machine intelligence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)