Author: Rob Fatland
Date: 15:39:29 04/22/98
Dear Gang; With the combination of the current opinion poll and the IBM announcement I feel compelled to reiterate my main idea about the Deep Blue phenomenon. Please skip this post if you've heard it before, or if you think IBM is a nifty company. 1. The Borg analogy is correct: IBM *used* you, me, the entire chess community, the entire computer community, their collective public credibility, together with that of the DB research team, Joel Benjamin, Garry Kasparov, David Robinson, and anyone else they could suck in entirely for the purpose of making money. The historical value of the project has escaped their notice, and the result is a disgrace. 2. The disgrace is twofold: First, that IBM did not then support the Deep Blue project after the Kasparov match so that we could really observe the machine and the chess play it would produce. Instead, they chopped it up and abandoned the project like a bunch of petulant children. No doubt Kasparov's immaturity contributed, but this was not the deciding factor. The deciding factor was greed. 3. The second disgrace is that nobody seems to object to being used in this way. This recent CCC opinion poll asks this nice hypothetical question about Deep Blue's playing strength as if there were some match pending against Fritz in a couple of weeks. Let's face it: IBM has killed Deep Blue. Deep Blue is not a real thing; it is nothing more than an advertising gimmick, like the words `New and Improved' or the Tidy Bowl Man. 4. Unless IBM or someone else revives the project in a legitimate way, history will see Deep Blue as a late 20th century version of the Turk; a chess playing automoton founded on deception. All those CMU CS guys who built careers on this project will appear to be nothing more than your usual duped scientists and a bunch of rubes. 5. Therefore, I suggest we bury Deep Blue and forget about it (as we avoid discussing the Tidy Bowl Man) and concentrate on what IBM was pretending to do: Make a legitimate computer chess program that is capable of playing with the world's best. Thankyou for your attention. I am generally a pretty happy graduate student who loves chess, but in some circumstances I am necessarily a social critic as well. -r
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