After Kasparov had won their 1996 encounter, IBM engineers rebuilt Deep Blue with vastly greater processing power, capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second. In the tense rematch's final game, Kasparov, rattled and suspecting human interference, resigned after just 19 moves. The result stunned the chess world and became a landmark moment in artificial intelligence history.
Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess player alive, had beaten an earlier version of Deep Blue in 1996 and entered the 1997 rematch confident. But IBM's engineers had radically upgraded the machine, giving it custom chess chips capable of examining roughly 200 million positions every second, dwarfing anything a human brain could process.
The match was tense and psychologically grueling. After a shaky start, Kasparov grew convinced that some of Deep Blue's moves were too creative, too human, and accused IBM of cheating with covert human guidance, an accusation IBM denied and which was never substantiated.
In the final game, visibly rattled, Kasparov blundered early and resigned after only 19 moves, a stunningly quick collapse for a player of his caliber. The match became a cultural watershed, the moment many people first understood that machines could out-think humans at tasks once considered the pinnacle of human intellect.
Key people: Garry Kasparov