Sore Loser
As we all know, Garry
Kasparov is a Russian chess player. So where did he get this uncanny ability to
whine exactly like an American pro athlete after an unexpected drubbing?
"The machine's win has not
proved anything. It's not yet ready, in my opinion, to win a big contest."
That's
Kasparov, explaining how Deep Blue's resounding victory did not really
constitute a "big" win. The rangy, big-shouldered computer prevailed in the
most famous man vs. machine chess match in history--3 1/2 points to 2 1/2
points--capped by a 19-move butt kicking that inspired one grandmaster to
observe, "Kasparov got wiped off the board." Kasparov reacted by reaching deep
into the sports-cliché moan bag, maintaining that he had been cheated by some
kind of backdoor playmaking help from the IBM team, that the real Garry
Kasparov hadn't shown up at the match ("I was not in a fighting mood"), and
that his coaching had been bad ("my biggest mistake was following the advice of
computer advisers who recommended I play this way").
What way? Losingly?
In addition, he talked about
himself in the annoying "third-person jock," whimpered about Deep Blue's
superior firepower (news flash, Garry: the other side usually
demonstrates that when it beats you), and grumbled his way through a trash-talk
version of "wait till next year." "It [had] nothing to do [with] science," he
whined. "It was one zeal to beat Garry Kasparov. And when a big corporation
with unlimited resources would like to do so, there are many ways to achieve
the result."
And: "I
personally guarantee if the machine plays me again, I would tear it to
pieces."
As IBM's Chung-Jen Tan, the leader of the Deep
Blue team, recognized with his overwrought For the Ages rhetoric ("historically
for mankind, this is like landing on the moon"), the match will go down in the
permanent record of human-computer relations. Kasparov made us all look
churlish, bratty, and just plain bad. We humans deserved a better spokesman at
this epochal point in our ongoing voyage of humility; a half century from now,
surly, street-tough androids will routinely start bar brawls over the bitchy
tone of Kasparov's remarks. Yes, Kasparov had to be the guy on the front
line--after all, he's the best human chess player of all time. Still, he left
much to be desired in what Frank Deford would call "the class and grace
department."
How
much nicer it would have been if Kasparov had accepted his defeat with a few
tactful words like, "You de man!" or, "You de machine!"
If Kasparov does get back onto the board with
Deep Blue, he really must get it together deportmentwise. May I suggest that he
seek role models in the world of checkers, a supremely challenging game (there
are 500 billion billion possible positions on the checkerboard) that doesn't
get the respect it deserves?
Checkers
masters stared down their Armageddon a few years ago, when a powerful computer
program named Chinook forged a tie with the second-best checkers player in the
world, Don Lafferty. A weaker version of Chinook had previously lost to the
legendary Marion Tinsley, a retired university math teacher considered the
greatest checkers player of all time, who had to withdraw from a 1994 rematch
because of the pancreatic cancer that eventually killed him. Lafferty bravely
stepped in and duked out a record of 1-1-18. No clear decision.
What really matters, though, is that neither
man resorted to in-your-face woo-woos or bitching, though in this case, sassy
talk from the other side probably warranted retaliation. ("The computer
gets smarter every day," said Professor Jonathan Schaeffer, who led the team
that programmed Chinook, "and human players like Dr. Tinsley and Lafferty just
get older.") Tinsley credited God for his abilities, while Lafferty reacted to
the tie with the same sort of aplomb that, it's safe to say, he would have
displayed if he'd lost.
"It put a lot of strain on
me," he admitted, making Chinook sound not like a machine but like a grizzled
counterpart who deserved respect, even affection. "It's nearly got human
capabilities now. ... But I like this machine. I think humans and computers are
compatible."
