“So from the moment when a date for a rematch was agreed, the technical, administrative and public-relations resources of a huge IT corporation were thrown behind the effort to ensure that Kasparov would lose. Deep Blue was massively improved with more and faster processing hardware; its software was likewise tuned and trained by a squad of chess grandmasters secretly hired by IBM.”
Nothing really new. Just another “sour grapes” book. In the decade and a half since the match, the idea of and research into artificial intelligence have increased exponentially. Kasparov lost to a relatively primitive algorithm and computer system compared to what is available today. He had way more than a 50% chance of winning back then. Today he might be terrified and lose to a smartphone app. He blew it and still has not gotten over it. If anything, it shows the difficulty that he had as an older player learning, processing, and changing the way he plays. Fortunately, chess moved on and players learned to use the new technology rather than whine over it. It awaits to be seen how the game of Go will recover and adapt to the losses to Google’s DeepMind team.
Frankly, what did Kasparov expect a corporation like IBM to do? They were taking a big marketing risk for their future as a company selling high end computer systems and decision making software. Of course, they were going to hire the best in the computer chess field plus some GMs to hone the evaluative system. In the end, IBM is said to have made over $800 million dollars in sales compared to its investment. So, you can understand that they were going to play hard ball. Who would give away proprietary information? Kasparov comes off as a true naif with regard to business and technology.
My understanding, IIRC, is that IBM dismantled/destroyed Big blue shortly after the match. That makes little sense to me.
The reviewer notes that Kasparov has mellowed somewhat as to his loss and that there apparently is information that is either new or not widely known. I’ll give it a read this coming weekend. I should have it in hand by Wednesday.