Kasparov coming to Disrupt New York

TechCrunch is an online publisher of technology industry news. It primarily covers businesses ranging from startups to established firms. The website is owned by AOL, which aquired it in 2010 (for a price between $25 million and $40 million). TechCrunch Disrupt is an annual conference, begun in 2011 and hosted in San Francisco, New York City, London and Beijing. Technology startups launch their products and services competing on stage in front of venture capital potential investors, media and other interested parties for prize money and publicity.

The next TechCrunch Disrupt takes place in New York, from May 15-17, in New York City, Pier 36.

In the section on Artificial Intelligence the lead speaker is, guess who:

Click to read a full description of Kasparov's lecture

Kasparov tells the story of his 1997 match against Deep Blue, and of the intellectual avenues down which it sent him, in a new book coming this May — and he’ll be onstage at Disrupt NY to talk about his growing acceptance of machine learning as a complement to humanity, not an opponent. As we move toward a world that is increasingly dependent on machine learning, Kasparov provides a unique perspective as chess is one of the first areas in which machine learning was thoroughly explored.

Kasparov is a member of the executive advisory board of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics and a senior visiting fellow at the Oxford Martin School, focusing on human-machine decision-making. On May 17 in Manhattan the discussion will be about limits and limitless capacity of the human intellect, as well as our responsibility to use tools like artificial intelligence to improve our world, not just accelerate it.

You can buy tickets for the TechCrunch Disrupt in New York here. But be warned: it costs US $1,995 for the three-day event. But you get to rub shoulders with leaders and innovators of the technology and media industries. They give you deep insights into creative destruction, big changes and subtle trends. You get to meet the people behind the new startups, new products and new technologies driving disruption today, and be part of a conversation that will stimulate and challenge you.

Garry Kasparov: Deep Thinking

In May 1997, the world watched as Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player in the world, was defeated for the first time by the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. It was a watershed moment in the history of technology: machine intelligence had arrived at the point where it could best human intellect.It wasn't a coincidence that Kasparov became the symbol of man's fight against the machines.

Chess has long been the fulcrum in development of machine intelligence; the hoax automaton "The Turk" in the 18th century and Alan Turing's first chess program in 1952 were two early examples of the quest for machines to think like humans – a talent we measured by their ability to beat their creators at chess.

As the preeminent chessmaster of the 80s and 90s, it was Kasparov's blessing and his curse to play against each generation's strongest computer champions, contributing to their development and advancing the field. Like all passionate competitors, Kasparov has taken his defeat and learned from it. He has devoted much energy to devising ways in which humans can partner with machines in order to produce results better than either can achieve alone.

During the twenty years since playing Deep Blue, he's played both with and against machines, learning a great deal about our vital relationship with our most remarkable creations. Ultimately, he's become convinced that by embracing the competition between human and machine intelligence, we can spend less time worrying about being replaced and more thinking of new challenges to conquer.

In this breakthrough book, Kasparov tells his side of the story of Deep Blue for the first time – what it was like to strategize against an implacable, untiring opponent – the mistakes he made and the reasons the odds were against him. But more than that, he tells his story of AI more generally, and how he's evolved to embrace it, taking part in an urgent debate with philosophers worried about human values, programmers creating self-learning neural networks, and engineers of cutting edge robotics. He surveys the serious questions facing a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on AI, creating an essential guide for the business readers and educators he speaks to by the thousands every year.

Garry Kasparov: Deep Thinking will be available in May. You can pre-order at Amazon.

Also read: ChessBase article, Kasparov on the future of Artificial Intelligence