Whether it’s athletes on a sporting field or celebrities in the jungle, nothing holds our attention like the drama of vying for a single prize. And when it comes to the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), some of the most captivating moments have also been delivered in nailbiting finishes.
In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue chess computer was pitted against grandmaster and reigning world champion Garry Kasparov, having lost to him the previous year.
But this time, the AI won. The popular Chinese game Go was next, in 2016, and again there was a collective intake of breath when Google’s AI was victorious. These competitions elegantly illustrate what is unique about AI: we can program it to do things we can’t do ourselves, such as beat a world champion.
