On May 11, 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match held in New York City. It was the first time a reigning world champion lost a match to a computer under standard tournament conditions. The victory drew global attention to advances in computing and artificial intelligence. Many people saw it as a sign that machines could now match or exceed human performance in some complex tasks. At the same time, experts pointed out that Deep Blue was programmed specifically for chess, rather than general reasoning. The event helped spark ongoing conversation about the future relationship between humans and powerful computer systems.
