Imagine, if you will, a baseball pitching machine that can throw any kind of pitch, to any location it wants, and at any speed it wants.
Put this machine up against Greg Maddux.
Maddux is the best pitcher on Earth, but Maddux tires out after nine or more innings. The pitching machine can pitch hundreds or thousands of innings, day after day, month after month if need be. Also, batters can study film of Greg Maddux, and deduce his tendencies, strengths and weaknesses from previous games. The pitching machine has no such history to study, and so is a complete enigma to any batter facing it.
There's no doubt that a pitching machine so constructed would leave Greg Maddux gasping for air.
Do we then assume that baseball pitching, as a sport and an art, is done for?
No, of course not. Baseball is not a purely mechanical activity. Conditioning, strategy, and even psychology are important parts of any baseball contest. Greg Maddux is baseball's premier pitcher because of his arm, and also because of his head and heart. A pitching machine would be an interesting phenomenon, but nothing more.
So, then, do I see the IBM Big Blue chess-playing computer that defeated world champion Garry Kasparov. Chess is not a purely mechanical activity either. Kasparov is world champion because of his chess-playing skill, and also because of his powers of concentration, his physical stamina, and his ability to perform gracefully and intelligently under pressure. The computer has none of these attributes, nor does the computer need them.
When Kasparov complained after the match that the computer was specially constructed to beat him personally, he may well have been right. The programming team had studied Kasparov's games in great detail, a luxury that Kasparov did not have against the machine. Imagine John Smoltz, Roger Clemens, and Mike Mussina, along with a host of other pitchers, building a machine to strike out Ken Griffey Jr. Griffey can't study the machine, but the builders of the machine can study all of Griffey's at bats in the major leagues since 1989.
Look at it this way. If a pitching machine can be built as described above, why not build robot batters? They can certainly swing a bat faster and with more strength than Griffey or Frank Thomas. Put two whole teams of robots on the field. Would anyone be interested? Outside of the engineering departments of our nation's colleges, no.
Why not? Because a sport is a contest between people.
Chess is a sport, too, you know. A look at Garry Kasparov's training regimen (yes, he has one, and it's as detailed and difficult as any athlete's) will show that. No one would pay to see a chess match between two computers, just as no one would pay to see an Indianapolis 500 with remote controlled cars and no drivers. The lead programmer of the IBM team claimed that Big Blue's victory was on the level of man walking on the moon; this was hyperbole uttered in the flush of victory, and he wisely backtracked a bit in the next few days.
So the idea that mankind is somehow diminished by Deep Blue's victory is silly. The computer may help in the analysis of games in the future, but chess is a game of stamina and willpower as well as positional skill. The computer is an interesting diversion in the history of the world's greatest board game. It's nothing more than that.