Kasparov isn't Just Chess-Smart

I never thought of ex-world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, as a multifaceted person. Boy, was I wrong as I found by reading this interview he gave recently.

Today, a Chinese game called Go is considered a better test of “true” machine intelligence than chess. Why then was chess the focus area for so long? Says Kasparov:

“I don’t think the founding fathers of computer science had the same affection to Go or Shogi because they are not familiar or had very little knowledge of these games that were played in other parts of the world.”

But regardless of whichever mental game we pit man against machine, Kasparov feels the human would succumb to the “terrible psychological pressure” of playing to win. (Recently, Google’s AI beat the human world champion at Go).

But would machines and their perfect analysis rob us of “beautiful” games? Possibly, says Kasparov. Remembering a great game from his past, he said:

“You look at the time I spent, I played, almost blitzed because I was so anxious to reach the position and to demonstrate how far I could see it. Also, I was amazed by the beauty of this geometry.”

As the interviewer said, it was “aesthetically pleasing”. And yet, even from that point onwards, there were moves that his opponent could have moved to prolong or thwart Kasparov’s win. Why didn’t he? Because he too got caught up by the “beauty” of Kasparov’s sequence and could not imagine that there might be a way out! Ironically, Kasparov hadn’t considered those alternatives either. As the interviewer summarized:

“Because you were so excited by this combination, in some ways, it may have led you down inexact paths, but it nonetheless led you down those paths, and we got the beautiful game that we did.”

Today, of course, algorithms have moved beyond games to making decisions. Who should get that loan? Who is a possible terrorist? So are humans going to lose all their jobs? Says Kasparov:

“This is the history of human civilization. The whole history is a steady process of replacing all forms of labor by machines. It started with machines replacing farm animals and then manual laborers, and it kept growing and growing and growing.”

And he also rightly says:

“The only difference with what we have been seeing throughout human history is that now, machines are coming after people with college degrees, political influence, and Twitter accounts.”

Plus, he points out that a redistribution of jobs is likely:

“Many jobs today — like drone operators or 3-D printer managers or social media managers — they didn’t exist 10 years ago, 15 years ago.”

Asked how we can prepare for such a future, Kasparov responded:

“Instead of teaching what, we have to teach how because this knowledge may be redundant 10 years from now.”

The interviewer responded that such educational and other systemic changes would take a long time to happen, by which time AI would have changed even more! Kasparov’s response to that was pragmatic:

“It’s a challenge that is ahead of us, but it’s not the end of the world. There will be downsides, but there will be upsides. Let’s see how we can manage our move into the future. Because what is the alternative? We don’t get to choose when and where technological progress stops. It’s happening.”

Another area he talked about was politics. He disagreed that historical patterns nudge a country to pick particular forms of government:

“I’m not convinced with these arguments about some nations being predetermined in their development and alien to the concept of democracy and the rule of law.”

He cited North v/s South Korea and China v/s Taiwan as examples of how the very same people could end up with radically different forms of governance.

Even among non-democracies, Kasparov said there are differences. Like Russia:

“Putin’s Russia is a one-man dictatorship. And a dictator doesn’t care about the future of the country or about the transition of power.”

Whereas countries like Iran and China have groups of very powerful people who care about the future, and therefore they make certain compromises.

Never realized Garry Kasparov was so multi-faceted or articulate!