1
00:00:00,960 --> 00:00:03,936
This story begins in 1985,

2
00:00:03,960 --> 00:00:05,936
when at age 22,

3
00:00:05,960 --> 00:00:08,336
I became the World Chess Champion

4
00:00:08,360 --> 00:00:11,560
after beating Anatoly Karpov.

5
00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:13,736
Earlier that year,

6
00:00:13,760 --> 00:00:17,376
I played what is called
simultaneous exhibition

7
00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:21,696
against 32 of the world's
best chess-playing machines

8
00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:23,080
in Hamburg, Germany.

9
00:00:24,160 --> 00:00:25,360
I won all the games,

10
00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:29,736
and then it was not considered
much of a surprise

11
00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:33,800
that I could beat 32 computers
at the same time.

12
00:00:34,480 --> 00:00:37,056
To me, that was the golden age.

13
00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:39,176
(Laughter)

14
00:00:39,200 --> 00:00:40,720
Machines were weak,

15
00:00:41,680 --> 00:00:43,016
and my hair was strong.

16
00:00:43,040 --> 00:00:45,240
(Laughter)

17
00:00:46,720 --> 00:00:48,776
Just 12 years later,

18
00:00:48,800 --> 00:00:53,416
I was fighting for my life
against just one computer

19
00:00:53,440 --> 00:00:54,640
in a match

20
00:00:55,360 --> 00:00:57,416
called by the cover of "Newsweek"

21
00:00:57,440 --> 00:00:59,216
"The Brain's Last Stand."

22
00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:00,456
No pressure.

23
00:01:00,480 --> 00:01:02,000
(Laughter)

24
00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:05,616
From mythology to science fiction,

25
00:01:05,640 --> 00:01:08,376
human versus machine

26
00:01:08,400 --> 00:01:11,160
has been often portrayed
as a matter of life and death.

27
00:01:11,960 --> 00:01:13,536
John Henry,

28
00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:15,256
called the steel-driving man

29
00:01:15,280 --> 00:01:19,056
in the 19th century
African American folk legend,

30
00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:20,456
was pitted in a race

31
00:01:20,480 --> 00:01:23,216
against a steam-powered hammer

32
00:01:23,240 --> 00:01:25,600
bashing a tunnel through mountain rock.

33
00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:31,000
John Henry's legend
is a part of a long historical narrative

34
00:01:31,680 --> 00:01:34,760
pitting humanity versus technology.

35
00:01:36,200 --> 00:01:39,080
And this competitive rhetoric
is standard now.

36
00:01:39,560 --> 00:01:41,520
We are in a race against the machines,

37
00:01:42,360 --> 00:01:44,440
in a fight or even in a war.

38
00:01:45,880 --> 00:01:47,496
Jobs are being killed off.

39
00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:51,080
People are being replaced
as if they had vanished from the Earth.

40
00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:55,736
It's enough to think that the movies
like "The Terminator" or "The Matrix"

41
00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:56,960
are nonfiction.

42
00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:03,960
There are very few instances of an arena

43
00:02:05,360 --> 00:02:09,616
where the human body and mind
can compete on equal terms

44
00:02:09,639 --> 00:02:11,480
with a computer or a robot.

45
00:02:12,280 --> 00:02:14,138
Actually, I wish there were a few more.

46
00:02:15,760 --> 00:02:16,960
Instead,

47
00:02:17,840 --> 00:02:22,496
it was my blessing and my curse

48
00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:25,216
to literally become the proverbial man

49
00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:28,336
in the man versus machine competition

50
00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:30,240
that everybody is still talking about.

51
00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:38,136
In the most famous human-machine
competition since John Henry,

52
00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:40,736
I played two matches

53
00:02:40,760 --> 00:02:44,200
against the IBM supercomputer, Deep Blue.

54
00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:49,216
Nobody remembers
that I won the first match --

55
00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:51,576
(Laughter)

56
00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:55,000
(Applause)

57
00:02:55,920 --> 00:03:00,896
In Philadelphia, before losing the rematch
the following year in New York.

58
00:03:00,920 --> 00:03:02,680
But I guess that's fair.

59
00:03:04,320 --> 00:03:09,416
There is no day in history,
special calendar entry

60
00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:12,936
for all the people
who failed to climb Mt. Everest

61
00:03:12,960 --> 00:03:15,696
before Sir Edmund Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay

62
00:03:15,720 --> 00:03:16,920
made it to the top.

63
00:03:17,960 --> 00:03:21,720
And in 1997, I was still
the world champion

64
00:03:24,520 --> 00:03:28,720
when chess computers finally came of age.

65
00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:31,496
I was Mt. Everest,

66
00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:33,120
and Deep Blue reached the summit.

67
00:03:34,600 --> 00:03:38,656
I should say of course,
not that Deep Blue did it,

68
00:03:38,680 --> 00:03:40,816
but its human creators --

69
00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:44,176
Anantharaman, Campbell, Hoane, Hsu.

70
00:03:44,200 --> 00:03:45,400
Hats off to them.

71
00:03:46,840 --> 00:03:51,256
As always, machine's triumph
was a human triumph,

72
00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:56,040
something we tend to forget when humans
are surpassed by our own creations.

73
00:03:58,360 --> 00:03:59,800
Deep Blue was victorious,

74
00:04:01,400 --> 00:04:02,600
but was it intelligent?

75
00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:05,120
No, no it wasn't,

76
00:04:06,200 --> 00:04:11,256
at least not in the way Alan Turing
and other founders of computer science

77
00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:12,480
had hoped.

78
00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:18,016
It turned out that chess
could be crunched by brute force,

79
00:04:18,040 --> 00:04:22,296
once hardware got fast enough

80
00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:25,280
and algorithms got smart enough.

81
00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:30,456
Although by the definition of the output,

82
00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:33,696
grandmaster-level chess,

83
00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:35,000
Deep Blue was intelligent.

84
00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:39,720
But even at the incredible speed,

85
00:04:40,560 --> 00:04:43,760
200 million positions per second,

86
00:04:45,360 --> 00:04:46,560
Deep Blue's method

87
00:04:47,360 --> 00:04:53,960
provided little of the dreamed-of insight
into the mysteries of human intelligence.

88
00:04:56,960 --> 00:04:58,776
Soon,

89
00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:01,376
machines will be taxi drivers

90
00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:03,816
and doctors and professors,

91
00:05:03,840 --> 00:05:06,440
but will they be "intelligent?"

92
00:05:07,840 --> 00:05:10,336
I would rather leave these definitions

93
00:05:10,360 --> 00:05:13,920
to the philosophers and to the dictionary.

94
00:05:15,440 --> 00:05:19,320
What really matters is how we humans

95
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:23,920
feel about living and working
with these machines.

96
00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:31,416
When I first met Deep Blue
in 1996 in February,

97
00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:34,040
I had been the world champion
for more than 10 years,

98
00:05:36,080 --> 00:05:40,096
and I had played 182
world championship games

99
00:05:40,120 --> 00:05:45,216
and hundreds of games against
other top players in other competitions.

100
00:05:45,240 --> 00:05:50,296
I knew what to expect from my opponents

101
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:52,000
and what to expect from myself.

102
00:05:52,680 --> 00:05:57,856
I was used to measure their moves

103
00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:01,496
and to gauge their emotional state

104
00:06:01,520 --> 00:06:05,360
by watching their body language
and looking into their eyes.

105
00:06:05,880 --> 00:06:09,880
And then I sat across
the chessboard from Deep Blue.

106
00:06:12,960 --> 00:06:15,816
I immediately sensed something new,

107
00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:17,160
something unsettling.

108
00:06:19,440 --> 00:06:22,240
You might experience a similar feeling

109
00:06:23,320 --> 00:06:25,856
the first time you ride
in a driverless car

110
00:06:25,880 --> 00:06:30,720
or the first time your new computer
manager issues an order at work.

111
00:06:33,800 --> 00:06:36,920
But when I sat at that first game,

112
00:06:38,080 --> 00:06:40,216
I couldn't be sure

113
00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:43,920
what is this thing capable of.

114
00:06:44,920 --> 00:06:48,080
Technology can advance in leaps,
and IBM had invested heavily.

115
00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:49,880
I lost that game.

116
00:06:52,320 --> 00:06:54,096
And I couldn't help wondering,

117
00:06:54,120 --> 00:06:55,680
might it be invincible?

118
00:06:56,600 --> 00:06:58,960
Was my beloved game of chess over?

119
00:07:00,800 --> 00:07:04,936
These were human doubts, human fears,

120
00:07:04,960 --> 00:07:06,640
and the only thing I knew for sure

121
00:07:07,400 --> 00:07:10,296
was that my opponent Deep Blue
had no such worries at all.

122
00:07:10,320 --> 00:07:12,080
(Laughter)

123
00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:15,320
I fought back

124
00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:18,080
after this devastating blow

125
00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:20,200
to win the first match,

126
00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:22,600
but the writing was on the wall.

127
00:07:24,400 --> 00:07:26,536
I eventually lost to the machine

128
00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:29,616
but I didn't suffer the fate of John Henry

129
00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:32,680
who won but died
with his hammer in his hand.

130
00:07:32,718 --> 00:07:35,560
[John Henry Died with a Hammer in His Hand
Palmer C. Hyden]

131
00:07:35,580 --> 00:07:37,880
[The Museum of African
American Art, Los Angeles]

132
00:07:37,910 --> 00:07:40,256
It turned out that the world of chess

133
00:07:40,280 --> 00:07:43,520
still wanted to have
a human chess champion.

134
00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:46,600
And even today,

135
00:07:48,080 --> 00:07:51,536
when a free chess app
on the latest mobile phone

136
00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:53,576
is stronger than Deep Blue,

137
00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:55,080
people are still playing chess,

138
00:07:56,680 --> 00:07:58,920
even more than ever before.

139
00:07:59,800 --> 00:08:03,016
Doomsayers predicted
that nobody would touch the game

140
00:08:03,040 --> 00:08:05,296
that could be conquered by the machine,

141
00:08:05,320 --> 00:08:07,536
and they were wrong, proven wrong,

142
00:08:07,560 --> 00:08:11,016
but doomsaying has always been
a popular pastime

143
00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:12,400
when it comes to technology.

144
00:08:14,360 --> 00:08:17,096
What I learned from my own experience

145
00:08:17,120 --> 00:08:21,776
is that we must face our fears

146
00:08:21,800 --> 00:08:25,520
if we want to get the most
out of our technology,

147
00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:28,736
and we must conquer those fears

148
00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:34,000
if we want to get the best
out of our humanity.

149
00:08:36,120 --> 00:08:37,895
While licking my wounds,

150
00:08:37,919 --> 00:08:39,880
I got a lot of inspiration

151
00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:43,775
from my battles against Deep Blue.

152
00:08:43,799 --> 00:08:46,920
As the old Russian saying goes,
if you can't beat them, join them.

153
00:08:48,880 --> 00:08:50,256
Then I thought,

154
00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:52,616
what if I could play with a computer --

155
00:08:52,640 --> 00:08:55,800
together with a computer at my side,
combining our strengths,

156
00:08:57,160 --> 00:09:00,936
human intuition
plus machine's calculation,

157
00:09:00,960 --> 00:09:03,656
human strategy, machine tactics,

158
00:09:03,680 --> 00:09:06,096
human experience, machine's memory.

159
00:09:06,120 --> 00:09:08,320
Could it be the perfect game ever played?

160
00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:11,680
My idea came to life

161
00:09:12,920 --> 00:09:16,296
in 1998 under the name of Advanced Chess

162
00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:22,000
when I played this human-plus-machine
competition against another elite player.

163
00:09:23,280 --> 00:09:25,176
But in this first experiment,

164
00:09:25,200 --> 00:09:31,560
we both failed to combine
human and machine skills effectively.

165
00:09:34,920 --> 00:09:37,160
Advanced Chess found
its home on the internet,

166
00:09:38,160 --> 00:09:43,016
and in 2005, a so-called
freestyle chess tournament

167
00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:44,400
produced a revelation.

168
00:09:47,240 --> 00:09:50,776
A team of grandmasters
and top machines participated,

169
00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:53,536
but the winners were not grandmasters,

170
00:09:53,560 --> 00:09:54,920
not a supercomputer.

171
00:09:55,680 --> 00:10:00,016
The winners were a pair
of amateur American chess players

172
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:03,200
operating three ordinary PCs
at the same time.

173
00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:08,576
Their skill of coaching their machines

174
00:10:08,600 --> 00:10:14,376
effectively counteracted
the superior chess knowledge

175
00:10:14,400 --> 00:10:15,976
of their grandmaster opponents

176
00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:20,160
and much greater
computational power of others.

177
00:10:21,600 --> 00:10:23,560
And I reached this formulation.

178
00:10:24,560 --> 00:10:27,936
A weak human player plus a machine

179
00:10:27,960 --> 00:10:31,216
plus a better process is superior

180
00:10:31,240 --> 00:10:33,656
to a very powerful machine alone,

181
00:10:33,680 --> 00:10:37,576
but more remarkably,
is superior to a strong human player

182
00:10:37,600 --> 00:10:39,560
plus machine

183
00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:43,520
and an inferior process.

184
00:10:46,360 --> 00:10:48,480
This convinced me that we would need

185
00:10:50,000 --> 00:10:53,680
better interfaces
to help us coach our machines

186
00:10:54,520 --> 00:10:56,240
towards more useful intelligence.

187
00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:01,616
Human plus machine isn't the future,

188
00:11:01,640 --> 00:11:02,856
it's the present.

189
00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:07,016
Everybody that's used online translation

190
00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:11,336
to get the gist of a news article
from a foreign newspaper,

191
00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:13,000
knowing its far from perfect.

192
00:11:13,680 --> 00:11:15,776
Then we use our human experience

193
00:11:15,800 --> 00:11:17,896
to make sense out of that,

194
00:11:17,920 --> 00:11:20,696
and then the machine
learns from our corrections.

195
00:11:20,720 --> 00:11:25,680
This model is spreading and investing
in medical diagnosis, security analysis.

196
00:11:26,440 --> 00:11:28,560
The machine crunches data,

197
00:11:29,320 --> 00:11:31,056
calculates probabilities,

198
00:11:31,080 --> 00:11:34,736
gets 80 percent of the way, 90 percent,

199
00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:39,136
making it easier for analysis

200
00:11:39,160 --> 00:11:41,760
and decision-making of the human party.

201
00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:47,120
But you are not going to send your kids

202
00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:51,560
to school in a self-driving car
with 90 percent accuracy,

203
00:11:52,600 --> 00:11:54,200
even with 99 percent.

204
00:11:55,560 --> 00:11:58,416
So we need a leap forward

205
00:11:58,440 --> 00:12:04,600
to add a few more crucial decimal places.

206
00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:11,200
Twenty years after
my match with Deep Blue,

207
00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:13,816
second match,

208
00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:20,136
this sensational
"The Brain's Last Stand" headline

209
00:12:20,160 --> 00:12:21,736
has become commonplace

210
00:12:21,760 --> 00:12:24,296
as intelligent machines

211
00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:25,520
move

212
00:12:26,560 --> 00:12:28,760
in every sector, seemingly every day.

213
00:12:30,160 --> 00:12:33,256
But unlike in the past,

214
00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:34,920
when machines replaced

215
00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:38,856
farm animals, manual labor,

216
00:12:38,880 --> 00:12:41,376
now they are coming
after people with college degrees

217
00:12:41,400 --> 00:12:42,680
and political influence.

218
00:12:44,120 --> 00:12:46,216
And as someone
who fought machines and lost,

219
00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:48,880
I am here to tell you
this is excellent, excellent news.

220
00:12:51,000 --> 00:12:53,216
Eventually, every profession

221
00:12:53,240 --> 00:12:55,336
will have to feel these pressures

222
00:12:55,360 --> 00:13:00,960
or else it will mean humanity
has ceased to make progress.

223
00:13:02,760 --> 00:13:03,960
We don't

224
00:13:05,440 --> 00:13:07,160
get to choose

225
00:13:08,480 --> 00:13:11,200
when and where
technological progress stops.

226
00:13:13,160 --> 00:13:14,520
We cannot

227
00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:17,456
slow down.

228
00:13:17,480 --> 00:13:19,296
In fact,

229
00:13:19,320 --> 00:13:21,240
we have to speed up.

230
00:13:24,600 --> 00:13:27,240
Our technology excels at removing

231
00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:32,560
difficulties and uncertainties
from our lives,

232
00:13:35,000 --> 00:13:37,816
and so we must seek out

233
00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:39,696
ever more difficult,

234
00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:43,800
ever more uncertain challenges.

235
00:13:48,200 --> 00:13:49,400
Machines have

236
00:13:51,880 --> 00:13:53,696
calculations.

237
00:13:53,720 --> 00:13:55,296
We have understanding.

238
00:13:55,320 --> 00:13:57,360
Machines have instructions.

239
00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:00,696
We have purpose.

240
00:14:00,720 --> 00:14:03,000
Machines have

241
00:14:05,080 --> 00:14:06,296
objectivity.

242
00:14:06,320 --> 00:14:07,520
We have passion.

243
00:14:08,600 --> 00:14:14,576
We should not worry
about what our machines can do today.

244
00:14:14,600 --> 00:14:19,176
Instead, we should worry
about what they still cannot do today,

245
00:14:19,200 --> 00:14:24,696
because we will need the help
of the new, intelligent machines

246
00:14:24,720 --> 00:14:28,800
to turn our grandest dreams into reality.

247
00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:31,320
And if we fail,

248
00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:36,896
if we fail, it's not because our machines
are too intelligent,

249
00:14:36,920 --> 00:14:38,320
or not intelligent enough.

250
00:14:39,200 --> 00:14:42,280
If we fail, it's because
we grew complacent

251
00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:45,240
and limited our ambitions.

252
00:14:46,520 --> 00:14:49,560
Our humanity is not defined by any skill,

253
00:14:51,280 --> 00:14:53,960
like swinging a hammer
or even playing chess.

254
00:14:54,560 --> 00:14:57,576
There's one thing only a human can do.

255
00:14:57,600 --> 00:14:58,800
That's dream.

256
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:02,656
So let us dream big.

257
00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:03,896
Thank you.

258
00:15:03,920 --> 00:15:07,807
(Applause)