Checkmate: How Chess Shaped Culture, Science, and Artificial Intelligence
Chess is a board game with characteristics that are quite simple to understand. Two players move a set of 16 pieces on an 8 x 8 board according to a set of movement rules: the pawn moves only forward and captures diagonally; the knight moves in an “L” shape; the bishop moves diagonally; the rook moves horizontally (rows) or vertically (columns); the queen, which is the most powerful piece, can move in any direction; and the king, compared to the queen, can move in any direction but only one square. Each player can move one piece at a time, until the opposing king is cornered with no possible moves left, thus ending the game with “checkmate.” This is the premise that any beginner player uses to play a casual game with a friend without major complexity.
Behind the game of chess lies an interesting and extensive history dating approximately between the 10th and 11th centuries, when the game entered Europe as an evolution of chaturanga from the Gupta Empire (India, 6th century). During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, reforms were made to the game, introducing the queen, the bishop, and castling. The 19th century marked the beginning of competitive chess, with the first international tournament held in London, where Adolf Anderssen was crowned champion. The 20th century served to professionalize chess; organizations such as FIDE (the International Chess Federation) were founded, and the concept of the “Grandmaster” was established.
An International Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded by FIDE to players who demonstrate passion and achieve at least 2600 Elo points, are active as international competitors participating in tournaments and official matches against other high-profile players (including other GMs), and are capable of playing multiple games in tournaments.
The GM title is more than just an award; it has also been used as a symbol of intellectual superiority (and still is), especially during the Cold War, when the USSR used chess as a tool of discord to reinforce the country’s image, mainly against the United States and the rest of the world.
Although the rules of chess, as explained earlier, are simple, the implications of moves and strategies are highly complex. Numerically speaking, according to mathematician Claude Shannon, a chess game is estimated to have 10¹²⁰ possible games—more than the number of atoms in the observable universe. The sheer number of possibilities outlines a horizon of unimaginable complexities for humans, who cannot possibly know or understand all the alternatives. This has led to hundreds of books on openings and strategies developed throughout the history of chess.
Thus, the GM is, among all players in the world, the one with the greatest knowledge and practice—capable of challenging even the most difficult opponents in a fierce battle for victory. Historically, there have been great masters who left their mark, such as Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world champion (1886); Emanuel Lasker, who held the title for 27 years (1894–1921); and the Cuban José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942), whose magic on the board dazzled the world with his wonderful style.
During the 20th century, chess hegemony belonged to the Soviet Union, where numerous chess stars emerged, including Mikhail Tal (Latvia), world champion in 1960 and 1961; Anatoly Karpov, world champion from 1975 to 1985 and again from 1993 to 1999; and the greatest representative of Russian chess (and according to some experts, the world), Garry Kasparov, world champion from 1985 to 2000.
International chess also had its luminaries, such as Bobby Fischer (U.S.), world champion from 1972 to 1975, and Nigel Short (England), who challenged for the world title in 1993, losing to Kasparov.
The world of technology, especially video games, was not left behind and began developing programs capable of playing chess. In 1950, Claude Shannon published a paper on the possibility of programming a computer to play chess. In 1951, Alan Turing (the father of Artificial Intelligence) designed the first algorithm to play chess before it could even be programmed into a computer. In 1957, IBM developed the IBM 704 Chess Program, one of the first executable programs capable of playing chess, and in 1967, Mac Hack VI from MIT became the first program to defeat a human player in an official tournament.
From there, chess programs grew more complex and capable, but they were never strong enough to defeat a GM. The sheer number of moves combined with the processing and memory limitations of computers at the time prevented the development of algorithms able to analyze many moves ahead. One approach used was deep search, which considered multiple alternatives three to five moves deep for all available pieces. This caused slow responses, as the computer took too long to determine the next move that maximized winning chances. Lack of positional intuition, limited opening databases, poor evaluation of complex pawn structures, static piece value assessments, and almost no dynamic compensation (limited ability to sacrifice pieces for greater gains) were typical shortcomings of programs of the era. Intermediate and advanced players knew this, which created predictability in the computer’s moves.
Gradually, chess programs improved these limitations, but overall, they remained machines without real understanding of the problem.
In 1989, IBM invested in developing a machine capable of executing millions of moves per second, something unique for the time, with help from Carnegie Mellon University students. The first version was ready in 1995 and was officially presented as the supercomputer “Deep Blue.” Its VLSI processors were specifically created for chess, capable of processing and calculating many positions quickly. Minimax algorithms were used to reduce the number of positions to explore, and chess heuristics were designed with the help of grandmasters. In addition, the algorithm was reinforced with a database of thousands of openings and strategies, allowing Deep Blue to become the final frontier of computational chess.
In 1997, IBM made a bold move and challenged grandmaster Garry Kasparov to a set of chess games. The conditions set by IBM were: six classical games, forty moves in two hours, and then an additional hour for twenty more moves. The games were played under FIDE rules, and Kasparov could make claims or moves as in normal play. However, Kasparov had only limited access to Deep Blue; he could not touch or modify it. IBM controlled the input of moves into the computer exclusively.
The event took place from May 3 to 11, 1997, at the Equitable Center in New York City, where Garry Kasparov lost the series 3½–2½ in favor of Deep Blue. This was the first time in history that a GM lost to a computer.
After the event, Kasparov reacted explosively, pointing out that the moves—especially in the second game—were too creative to have come from a machine. This sparked a heated debate over whether IBM had other GMs manipulating Deep Blue’s moves. Adding to the mystery, IBM denied Kasparov a rematch, cementing this milestone in the company’s (and the world’s) history as the moment when Deep Blue defeated the grandmaster of grandmasters.
IBM’s supercomputer was perhaps the foundation of more advanced, general-purpose computational capabilities, reigniting investment and research into machines not only capable of solving specific problems like chess but also of going beyond games with finite rules and domains, to perhaps, someday, compete intellectually with humans.
The miniaturization of computers, the drop in memory costs, instant access to massive data storage, the exponential growth of processing power since the 1980s, and the relentless globalization of scientific research have created fertile ground for new technologies. In the first quarter of the 21st century alone, more progress has been made in developing intelligent technologies than in the hundred years before 2000.
In the blink of an eye, today we have self-driving cars, vacuum cleaners that sweep the house and return to their charging bases with minimal human intervention, smartphones capable of accessing all human knowledge and answering questions instantly in real time. Today, machines generate music, art, and poetry; process medical diagnoses; help scientists discover new proteins in seconds; and are used to develop medicines and disease treatments. All this happened in a breath and has generated many reactions among people—some filled with awe, others with fear at the evolution of technology, which they barely understand.
The fear of the population toward new technologies and advancements is something humanity has experienced before, from the invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1769, to electricity and the light bulb by Edison and Swan in 1879, the development of computers with ENIAC in 1945, and the rise of intelligent machines and big data around 2010.
Are you scared?
