Why the Chess Computer Deep Blue Played Like a Human

What Kasparov might have sensed when he played Deep Blue is something that appeared like that creative randomness, which he took to be a “human” intuition of danger. Deep Blue programmer Feng-Hsiung Hsu writes in his book Behind Deep Blue that during the match, outside analysts were divided over a mysterious move made by the program, thinking it either weak or obliquely strategic. Eventually, the programmers discovered that the move was simply the result of a bug that had caused the computer not to choose what it had actually calculated to be the best move—something that could have appeared as random play. The bug wasn’t fixed until after game four, long after Kasparov’s spirit had been broken.

→ Nautilus