Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:00:32 11/10/98
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On November 10, 1998 at 04:08:17, Amir Ban wrote: >It so happens I have a draft Shay sent me of an article he's writing for some >purpose, in which, in passing, he reviews the Deep-Blue affair. Here's the >quote: > > ... > Indeed, in May 1997, an IBM "monster" named Deep-Blue managed to >beat Gary Kasparov, the reigning human world champion, in a six-game match >3.5-2.5. IBM cleaned up, achieving an amazing financial gain: > 1. Its stock jumped up 20% I think this part is crazy. http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=IBM&d=2y Look at that chart and try to figure out where the DB spike was. The stock was climbing for a month before the match and for two months after. This chart is nothing special. The stock market was going up during that period, that is why all of you guys have your retirement money in mutual funds. http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=F&d=2y That's the chart for Ford, the car guys. Looks like they went up about 25% during this period as well. http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=msft&d=2y That's Microsoft's. They went up like 40%. > 2. It had planted the notion of supremacy in computing Oh, yes, I'd never connected IBM with computing before :-) > 3. Its sales of super computers grew as it branded the name "Deep Blue" >in its product line. I'm sure they did, since they tried to tie DB to their product line, and they got a lot of hits on their web page, and they got a lot of press. If Shay wants to write a real article rather than a series of allegations he should figure out by how much they grew, and what lasting effect this had on their business. Also, he should look to see what other events might have driven IBM's stock during that period of time and whether analysts even mentioned this match as being a factor. It may have been, but if this was the article and not just an outline for the article, then Shay isn't realy showing anything. So please consider this as constructive criticism. What's the contention here? That IBM made money off of this match, and that this was their intent? I bet this is true, there were obviously some PR people working here, but the degree to which it had a lasting affect on IBM it isn't clear from what Shay says. Even if someone can say that they had two hundred million dollars in sales due to this, which is a figure I remember seeing, they had 8.6 billion dollars in hardware sales that quarter, and 18.8 billion dollars of revenue overall, so this is like a one percent increase in total sales due to this. That is still very impressive, and I bet these guys got some nice bonuses, but it's not going to make the stock go up 20% by itself. If a stock goes up 20%, the implication is that revenues will go up by 20%, forever, not just 1% for one quarter. My personal expectation is that huge economic factors drove that stock and in fact the whole stock market, not a chess match. http://sec.yahoo.com/e/l/i/ibm.html Anyone is absolutely free to argue with this, of course. It is very possible that there was some lasting financial effect of that match, but it wasn't presented in Shay's article and I don't know anything about it either. > By refusing to play a revenge match and dismantling the Deep Blue >project, IBM ensured that its result would be perceived as an ultimate proof >of supremacy and prolonged the public relations effect to the maximum. I do agree with this. The world thinks DB is better than Kasparov, and this is in my opinion probably not true, and I think it also reduces long-term interest in computer chess, since people won't be as interested in pushing this field if they think that something better than they can ever do has already been done. >Kasparov, shattered by his loss, has never played a computer since then. > A few facts regarding computers and the game of chess can cast some >doubt about Deep-Blue's true strength. Few people know, for instance, >that prior to its game against Kasparov, Deep-Blue with all its calculative >might, was not even the official world computer champion. > It lost this title, lo and behold, to a PC program named 'Fritz', from >Germany, that managed to defeat it at the official world computer >championships held in Hong-Kong 1995. > Since then, the IBM team carefully avoided any more "embarrassments" >and did not confront any other computer programs officially. In fact, it >reduced its opponent field to just one person - Gary Kasparov. I don't recall seeing it miss any important tournaments during that time. If it missed a computer versus computer event that it qualified for, I would like to know which one, because I missed it too. I don't think it is fair to claim that someone is avoiding a confrontation, when there are no events. bruce
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