In 1996 the ultimate contest of machine versus man took place in Philadelphia as Deep Blue, an emotionless IBM supercomputer faced off against Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. No computer had ever beaten a human under usual tournament rules, in which each player has two hours to make 40 moves. The contest was seen as symbolically significant, a sign that artificial intelligence was catching up to human intelligence, and could someday overtake us.
