Un ordinateur champion du monde d’Échecs : histoire d’un affrontement homme-machine

• Main Author: Lisa Rougetet
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Laboratoire Experice 2016-02-01
• Series: Sciences du Jeu
• Subjects: Chess; programming; Deep Blue; Minimax; artificial intelligence; media coverage
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sdj/598

On May 11th 1997, the win of Deep Blue program over the World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov marked a full stop milestone in the history of the human/machine confrontation around Chess game considered as the ultimate intelligent game. This history can be divided into three significant periods that correspond with the level reached by computer programs. Between 1950 and 1972, the game level of computers raised up to the one of a secondary school student. During the second period, from 1972 to 1988, programs reached a Grandmaster level; and finally, the third period was marked by a series of defeats of the best Chess players, and came to an end in 1997, with the Word Chess champion’s fall, an event broadcasted and followed all over the world. These three periods match the improvement of programs, made possible thanks to the major technological progress in processing power and storage capacity. Which were the social, technical and human reasons that led the development of an artificial intelligence in the Chess game area? Then, the question is: why and how can one have believed that an intelligent machine had been created?