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Technology and Culture 44.3 (2003) 634-635



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Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion. By Feng-hsiung Hsu. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii+298. $27.95.

This is an unusual book to review for Technology and Culture. Only tangentially a history of technology, it is mostly a memoir of a key participant in the narrative, Feng-hsiung Hsu. Historians of technology can find solace in the author's oft-stated theme, that it is about "'man as a performer versus man as a toolmaker'" (p. 264). Yet most of the book seems to concentrate on the clash of strong personalities.

Since I work in the same Carnegie Mellon department where he was once a doctoral student, it was too tempting for me to ask about memories of Feng-hsiung Hsu. Most people mentioned in the book remember him as "always getting what HE WANTED." This is a backhanded compliment that really means he was most remembered for his nonconformity. (He was called "Crazy Bird." This is not too far from the English meaning of his first name, but "crazy" is hardly a name that parents would give to a child.) In a department that supports each Ph.D. student, a certain amount of gratitude might be expected, but it is not evident in Behind Deep Blue.

In opposition to the hardworking Dr. Hsu we have two villains, Hans Berliner of Carnegie Mellon and Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. It seems as though these men did hardly anything that was right; each is vilified in equal share, although some of Kasparov's demands do seem ludicrous. The book accurately portrays the life of a monomaniac graduate student at a powerful school, the chess chips he and his fellow students created, and the chess world. It recounts the migration of their team, nearly whole, to IBM, and the drive to win the Friedkin Prize for the first chess computer to defeat the world champion.

Toward the end of the book Hsu wonders whether his nemesis at Carnegie Mellon, Berliner—the keeper of the Friedkin Prize—changed the rules so his team could not win. However, Hsu describes the meeting of the [End Page 634] American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in which his team was awarded the prize, not mentioning that Berliner also honored the predecessor machines, at Carnegie Mellon's Raj Reddy's behest.

Many will be surprised to find out how truly special-purpose chess machines are. Aside from a general-purpose core of RS-6000 workstations taken from the IBM test-before-shipping line, most of Deep Blue is a plethora of chips designed only for chess. In other words, Deep Blue was not an intelligent program that just happened to play chess; it was a chess machine with the latest technology dedicated to that purpose.

The book is very accessible. Complicated game summaries are avoided or relegated to an appendix. Although Hsu is diffident about his own chess prowess, it is clear that he knows a lot. In general, this is an excellent insider's view for those interested in a machine as a tool capable of defeating humans. As an artificial intelligence story, it is marginal. And friends of Hans Berliner and Garry Kasparov probably will not like it.

 



James E. Tomayko

Dr. Tomayko is a principal lecturer in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has written extensively on avionics software, and plays chess against his Macintosh computer.

Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer.

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