WEBVTT

00:00:01.175 --> 00:00:04.215
This story begins in 1985,

00:00:04.215 --> 00:00:06.157
when at age 22,

00:00:06.157 --> 00:00:08.708
I became the world chess champion

00:00:08.708 --> 00:00:12.636
after beating Anatoly Karpov.

00:00:12.636 --> 00:00:13.994
Earlier that year,

00:00:13.994 --> 00:00:17.586
I played what is called
simultaneous exhibition

00:00:17.586 --> 00:00:22.001
against 32 of the world's
best chess playing machines

00:00:22.001 --> 00:00:24.179
in Hamburg, Germany.

00:00:24.179 --> 00:00:26.386
I won all the games,

00:00:26.386 --> 00:00:29.686
and then it was not considered
much of a surprise

00:00:29.686 --> 00:00:34.752
that I could beat 32 computers
at the same time.

00:00:34.752 --> 00:00:37.291
To me, that was the golden age.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:37.291 --> 00:00:39.847
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:39.847 --> 00:00:41.671
Machines were weak,

00:00:41.671 --> 00:00:43.684
and my hair was strong.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:43.684 --> 00:00:46.030
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:46.030 --> 00:00:49.076
Just 12 years later,

00:00:49.076 --> 00:00:53.706
I was fighting for my life
against just one computer

00:00:53.706 --> 00:00:55.041
in a match

00:00:55.041 --> 00:00:57.676
called by the cover of Newsweek

00:00:57.676 --> 00:00:59.573
"The Brain's Last Stand."

00:00:59.573 --> 00:01:00.971
No pressure.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:00.971 --> 00:01:03.140
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:03.140 --> 00:01:06.018
From mythology to science fiction,

00:01:06.018 --> 00:01:08.436
human versus machine

00:01:08.436 --> 00:01:12.274
has been often portrayed
as a matter of life and death.

00:01:12.274 --> 00:01:15.611
John Henry called the steel-driving man

00:01:15.611 --> 00:01:19.394
in the 19th century
African American folk legend

00:01:19.394 --> 00:01:20.889
was pitted in a race

00:01:20.889 --> 00:01:23.748
against steam-powered hammer

00:01:23.748 --> 00:01:27.247
bashing a tunnel through mountain rock.

00:01:27.247 --> 00:01:31.883
John Henry's legend is a part
of a long historical narrative

00:01:31.883 --> 00:01:36.026
pitting humanity versus technology.

00:01:36.026 --> 00:01:39.840
And this competitive rhetoric
is standard now.

00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:42.452
We are in a race against the machines,

00:01:42.452 --> 00:01:46.146
in a fight or even in a war.

00:01:46.146 --> 00:01:47.779
Jobs are being killed off.

00:01:47.779 --> 00:01:51.902
People are being replaced
as if they had vanished from the Earth.

00:01:51.902 --> 00:01:55.992
It's enough to think that the movies
like "The Terminator" or "The Matrix"

00:01:55.992 --> 00:01:58.180
are nonfiction.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:58.180 --> 00:02:05.577
There are very few instances in an arena

00:02:05.577 --> 00:02:09.715
where the human body and mind
can compete on equal terms

00:02:09.715 --> 00:02:12.454
with a computer or a robot.

00:02:12.454 --> 00:02:14.841
Actually, I wish there were a few more.

00:02:14.841 --> 00:02:22.971
Instead, it was my blessing and my curse

00:02:22.971 --> 00:02:25.500
to literally become the proverbial man

00:02:25.500 --> 00:02:28.582
in the man versus machine competition

00:02:28.582 --> 00:02:33.362
that everybody is still talking about.

00:02:33.362 --> 00:02:38.433
In a most famous human-machine
competition since John Henry,

00:02:38.433 --> 00:02:41.003
I played two matches

00:02:41.003 --> 00:02:44.616
against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue.

00:02:47.539 --> 00:02:49.758
Nobody remembers
that I won the first match --

00:02:49.758 --> 00:02:51.596
(Laughter)

00:02:51.596 --> 00:02:57.750
(Applause) --

00:02:57.750 --> 00:03:00.849
in Philadelphia, before losing the rematch
the following year in New York.

00:03:00.849 --> 00:03:04.286
But I guess that's fair.

00:03:04.286 --> 00:03:09.841
There is no day in history
special calendar entry

00:03:09.841 --> 00:03:13.348
for all the people who failed
to climb Mt. Everest

00:03:13.348 --> 00:03:16.033
before Sir Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay

00:03:16.033 --> 00:03:18.152
made it to the top.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And in 1997, I was still
the world champion

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when chess computers finally came of age.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I was Mt. Everest,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and Deep Blue reached the summit.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I should stay of course,
not that Deep Blue did it,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but its human creators --

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Anantharaman, Campbell, Hoane, Hsu.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Hats off to them.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
As always, machine's triumph
was a human triumph,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
something we tend to forget when humans
are surpassed by our own creations.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Deep Blue was victorious,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but was it intelligent?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
No, no it wasn't,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
at least not in the way Alan Turing
and other founders of computer science

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
had hoped.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It turned out that chess could be
crunched by brute force,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
once hardware got fast enough

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and algorithms got smart enough.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Although by the definition of the output,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
grandmaster-level chess,
Deep Blue was intelligent,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but even at the incredible speed,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
200 million positions per second,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Deep Blue's method

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
provide little of the dreamed-of insight
into the mysteries of human intelligence.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Soon, machines will be taxi drivers

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and doctors and professors,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but will they be "intelligent?"

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I would rather leave these definitions

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to the philosophers and to the dictionary.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
What really matters is how we humans

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
feel about living and working
with these machines.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
When I first met Deep Blue
in 1996 in February,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I had been the world champion
for more than 10 years,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I had played 182
world championship games

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and hundreds of games against
other top players in other competitions.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I knew what to expect
from my opponents

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and what to expect from myself.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I was used to measure

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
their moves and to gauge
their emotional state

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
by watching their body language
and looking into their eyes.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And then I sat across
the chess board from Deep Blue.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I immediately sensed something new,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
something unsettling.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
You might experience a similar feeling

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
the first time you ride
in a driverless car

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or the first time your new computer
manager issues an order at work.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But when I sat at that first game,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I couldn't be sure

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what is the thing capable of.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Technology can advance in leaps,
and IBM had invested heavily.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I lost that game,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I couldn't help wondering,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
might it be invincible?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Was my beloved game of chess over?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
These were human doubts, human fears,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and the only thing I knew for sure

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
was that my opponent Deep Blue
had no such worries at all.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Laughter)

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I fought back

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
after this devastating blow
to win the first match,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but the writing was on the wall.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I eventually lost to the machine

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but I didn't suffer the fate of John Henry

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who won by died
with his hammer in his hand.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
It turned out that the world of chess

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
still wanted to have
a human chess champion.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And even today, when a free chess app

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
on the latest mobile phone
is stronger than Deep Blue,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
people are still playing chess,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
even more than ever before.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Doomsayers predicted that nobody
would touch the game

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that could be conquered by the machine,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and they were wrong, proving wrong,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but doomsaying has always been
a popular pasttime

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when it comes to technology.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
What I learned from my own experience

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is that we must face our fears

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if we want to get the most
out of our technology,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and we must conquer those fears

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if we want to get the best
out of our humanity.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
While licking my wounds,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I got a lot of inspiration

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from my battles against Deep Blue.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
As the old Russian saying goes,
if you can't beat them, join them.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Then I thought,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
what if I could play with a computer,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
together with a computer at my side,
combining our strengths,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
human intuition
plus machine's calculation,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
human strategy, machine tactics,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
human experience, machine's memory.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Could it be the perfect game ever played?

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
My idea came to life

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
in 1998 on the name of advanced chess

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when I played this human-plus-machine
competition against another elite player,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but in this first experiment,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
we both failed to combine human
and machine skills effectively.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Advanced chess found
its home on the Internet,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and in 2005, a so-called freestyle
chess tournament

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
produced a revelation.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
A team of grandmasters
and top machines participated,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but the winners were not grandmasters,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
not a supercomputer.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The winners were a pair of amateur
American chess players

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
operating three ordinary PCs
at the same time.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Their skill of coaching their machines

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
effectively counteracted
the superior chess knowledge

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
of their grandmaster opponents

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and much greater computational
power of others,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I reached this formulation.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
A weak human player plus a machine

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
plus a better process is superior

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to a very power machine alone,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but more remarkably, is superior
to a strong human player

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
plus machine and an inferior process.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This convinced me that we would need

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
better interfaces to help us
coach our machines

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
towards more useful intelligence.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Human plus machine isn't the future,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
it's present.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Everybody that's used online translation
to get the gist of a news article

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from a foreign newspaper

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
knowing its far from perfect.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Then we use our human experience

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to make sense out of that,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and then machine learns
from our corrections.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
This model is spreading and investing
in medical diagnosis, security analysis.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
The machine crunches data,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
calculates probabilities,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
gets 80 percent of the way, 90 percent,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
making it easier for analysis

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and decision-making of the human party.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But you are not going to send your kids

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to school in self-driving car
with 90 percent accuracy,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
even with 99 percent.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So we need a leap forward

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to add a few more crucial decimal places.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Twenty years after
my match with Deep Blue,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
second match,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this sensational "The Brain's
Last Stand" headline

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
has become commonplace

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
as intelligent machines

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
move in every sector, seemingly every day.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
But unlike in the past,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when machines replaced farm animals,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
manual labor, now they are coming after
people with college degrees

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and political influence,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and as someone who fought machines
and lost, I am here to tell you

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this is excellent, excellent news.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Eventually, every profession

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
will have to feel these pressures

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
or else it will mean humanity
has ceased to make progress.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We don't get to choose

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
when and where
technological progress stops.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We cannot slow down.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
In fact, we have to speed up.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Our technology excels at removing

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
difficulties and uncertainties

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from our lives,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and so we must seek out

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
ever more difficult,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
ever more uncertain challenges.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Machines have calculations.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We have understanding.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Machines have instructions.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We have purpose.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Machines have objectivity.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We have passion.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
We should not worry about what
our machines can do today.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Instead, we should worry about
what they still cannot do today,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
because we will need the help
of the new, intelligent machines

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to turn our grandest dreams into reality.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
And if we fail,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
if we fail, it's not because our machines

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
are too intelligent,
or not intelligent enough.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
If we fail, it's because
we grew complacent

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and limited our ambitions.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Our humanity is not defined by any skill,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
like swinging a hammer
or even playing chess.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
There's one thing only a human can do.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
That's dream.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
So let us dream big.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Thank you.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
(Applause)