Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in 1997: why confidence in human specialness keeps aging badly

CatAstro_Piyush · x · 2026-09-10

Alexandra Botez revisits the human-vs-machine chess arc: Kasparov beat Deep Blue in 1996, the machine won in 1997. He had been sure a machine calculating a billion positions per second couldn't overcome human anticipation, intuition, and imagination.

Chess isn't AGI, the author notes, but the pattern is telling: confidence in some uniquely human specialness keeps aging badly, and many people today sound just like Kasparov did when they talk about controlling machines smarter than us.

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