Garry Kasparov: Widely considered the greatest chess player of all time, world number one for most of 1986-2005. He is also a pro-democracy activist, author, and famously lost a 1997 match to IBM's Deep Blue.
What this episode covers
Kasparov discusses his lifelong drive to create something new in chess and his pain at losing, which he attributes to his own mistakes rather than opponents. He reframes his historic 1997 Deep Blue loss, arguing it was a mistake to ever treat chess as the pinnacle of human intellect, since machines win closed systems simply by making fewer mistakes. He distinguishes closed systems (where machines dominate) from open-ended ones (where humans still excel by asking the right questions), and praises AlphaZero as a first step toward machine-generated knowledge. The conversation turns political as he reflects on the failure of totalitarian systems, the link between Stalin and Hitler, and his ongoing opposition to Putin despite threats to his life.
Recommended on this episode
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien
“I always like to mention you know one of my favorite books a lot of the Rings daddy there's no there's no absolute good”— guest
The guest's own work
How Life Imitates Chess
Garry Kasparov
“author of several books including how life imitates chess which is a book on strategy and decision-making”— Lex Fridman
Winter Is Coming
Garry Kasparov
“winter is coming which is a book articulating his opposition to the Putin regime”— Lex Fridman
Deep Thinking
Garry Kasparov
“deep thinking which is a book on the role of both artificial intelligence and human intelligence in defining our future”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Stockfish
Stockfish
“you asked stockfish you asked Houdini you asked Commodore all the leading chess engines”— guest
Houdini
Robert Houdart
“you asked stockfish you asked Houdini you asked Commodore all the leading chess engines”— guest
Fritz
ChessBase
“we played against new chess engines like Fritz and other programs”— guest
Big reveals from this episode
- Kasparov reveals the 1997 Deep Blue match was the first match he ever lost in his life, which made it especially painful.
- He admits he suspected his loss was not just from bad play but from unfair factors having nothing to do with chess.
- He says a chess app on your mobile phone today is probably stronger than Deep Blue was.
- Kasparov calls it a mistake that civilization for centuries treated chess as the epitome of human intellect.
- He addresses an ex-KGB general's claim that he is 'probably next on the list' of Putin's enemies, which is why he lives in New York.
- He flatly states Russia interfered to elect Trump and will do everything to help him in 2020.
- He claims a human helping a superior computer could exploit AlphaZero's weaknesses because it would take it hundreds of thousands of games to self-correct.
Worth remembering
- At age 56 Kasparov says he can fight any opponent but not his biological clock.
- Chess cannot be solved: per Shannon the number of legal moves is around ten to the 46th power, too many for any computer in billions of years.
- Top chess engines rate around 3400-3500 versus Magnus Carlsen's ~2850, a gap he compares to Ferrari versus Usain Bolt.
- About 40,000 people die in US car accidents yearly, yet one autonomous-vehicle crash makes front-page news.
- He describes Magnus Carlsen as a lethal combination of Fischer's dynamism and Karpov's efficiency.
- When he retired his rating was ~2851, and in 1990 only one other player (Karpov) was even in the 2700 category, versus 50+ today.
- Chess players burn thousands of calories during a game, making physical conditioning important.
- He believes Putin's regime will end suddenly, noting the good news is that Putin also doesn't know when.