BEHIND DEEP BLUE

A byte-by-byte account of the successful effort of IBM computer scientists to create a machine that could defeat a genius.

Hsu, who left IBM in 1999 to write and to pursue non-chess–related interests, brings a unique perspective to this task: It was he and his colleagues (first in Carnegie Mellon’s Ph.D. Computer Science program and then at IBM) who designed the hardware and software that ultimately defeated Garry Kasparov in a highly publicized six-game match in 1997. Hsu insists that this was not a case of John Henry versus the steam engine; instead, it was man-as-toolmaker defeating man-as-performer. Hsu portrays himself, also, as a reluctant warrior who initially resisted the Call to Adventure and entered the fray only when the engineering issues began to intrigue him (at the outset, he knew little chess). In his chronicle of increasingly fierce Carnegie Mellon academic politics, a competitor, Prof. Hans Berliner, doesn’t come off well as his chess-playing computer (Hitech) falls behind the system designed by Hsu et al. Hsu gives ample credit to his colleagues and tries to be generous with Kasparov—though the latter emerges as somewhat arrogant, petulant, pampered, and petty, not to mention a sore loser. Hsu strives admirably to avoid geek-speak (he tells us what cursors and pawns are), and readers who speak neither computer-ese nor chess-ian can still enjoy the building tension. Born in Taiwan, Hsu appends some autobiographical material—as if to certify that he is no cyborg (he seems reluctant to accept much blame for computer failures, which, invariably, he attributes to “bugs” or to time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near). A strange, inaccurate index lists some people by first name, some by last.

A real-life Revenge of the Nerds, the tale captures some of the excitement of the day when a machine took a man to the woodshed. (20 halftones)