Chess master Garry Kasparov pens a review of Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind, revealing how computers have changed the game.

Kasparov made headlines in 1997 when he lost to a computer.  IBM’s Deep Blue was a revolution in artificial intelligence, evaluating 200 million chess moves per second. Kasparov considered this inevitable, recognizing now that the average home PC has chess programs able to beat most grandmasters.

The fear of computers rising as chess masters meant few would be interested in the game, but the opposite is happening. With chess a standard program on most new computers, people and especially children can be exposed to the game even in areas where the game is rarely played. Moreover, the computer is influencing the style of the next generation of grandmasters, particularly that of no style (but lots of substance). Kasparov writes:

It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn’t good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn’t been done that way before. It’s simply good if it works and bad if it doesn’t. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

Grandmasters are getting younger and younger, likely thanks to the readily available computer partner.

In the pre-computer era, teenage grandmasters were rarities and almost always destined to play for the world championship. Bobby Fischer’s 1958 record of attaining the grandmaster title at fifteen was broken only in 1991. It has been broken twenty times since then, with the current record holder, Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin, having claimed the highest title at the nearly absurd age of twelve in 2002. Now twenty, Karjakin is among the world’s best, but like most of his modern wunderkind peers he’s no Fischer, who stood out head and shoulders above his peers—and soon enough above the rest of the chess world as well.

The growth of computer’s computational power is fascinating. As summarized by Kasparov, “Before 1994 and after 2004 these [computer versus human] duels held little interest. The computers quickly went from too weak to too strong.” A computer program is has broken down checkers to become unbeatable (either outright win or tie, but it will never lose) and it’s creator has now set his sights on poker. Chess’ complexity likely means an unbeatable computer is many years away, but that only makes the challenge more exciting.

Just to add another layer of analysis, several human/computer chess teams were pit against each other finding that a great chess player with a simple computer can best the best computer, but amateur chess players with an okay computer and an excellent process of analyzing that data can beat a great chess player with an even better computer. Computers, it seems, are yet to make the human mind obsolete, but rather can best supplement our reasoning skills to make us smarter or more efficient.

The biggest secret in search engine optimization is that quality content, not buzz words, will get you top spots on Google.  This, of course, is the hard part.

Google’s PageRank determines the value of your website by who links to you. The more popular the linking site, the higher you’ll jump on search results.  The best way to get these links is to provide worthwhile and helpful content that others will want to recommend and link to.  One of the best ways to make this happen is to get your employees writing.

I receive significant push-back at this recommendation. Either employees are already too busy or they don’t know how to write.  Even if these excuses are true (and they are excuses), re-prioritization of resources and time (and some editing) can turn your entire staff into a blogging machine.

Recognize that your staff is already made up of experts in your field, and this if valuable for both your company and employees. IBM knew this and gave every staff member a blog, creating a vibrant and exciting array of niche, technical blogs. These blogs increased traffic and brand awareness for IBM while giving its employees visibility and respect among their peers (and likely helping them earn promotions or better jobs in the future).

Most companies can get away with a single blog written by most of the staff, each writing to their strengths. Have marketing people write about marketing your brand. Sales people can talk about new tricks they’ve learned.  The key is to make the content valuable to others, not simply self-promotion.

This should only take 30 minutes or so, and it can easily be done once or twice a week without hurting other aspects of your business.  The benefits far outweigh the added responsibility. Marketing and sales can become easier since clients have more ways to evaluate your company (and see how smart your employee’s are). Employees will enjoy the creativity and chance to show off their intelligence while learning new skills making them more attractive to future employers. This is a win-win and important for any company’s SEO and social media strategy.

In 1981, a little company called IBM teamed up with Microsoft to create something called a personal computer.  And as Tandy president John Roach said, it’s not that significant.

Yes, IBM and Microsoft began the personal computing revolution with the $1,500 PC.  Microsoft included the first major release of MS-DOS, the influential operating system that gave uses a simple (at the time) way to make full use of their powerful 4.77 MHz processor.  Some geeks still use DOS to this day, feeling the world is better in black and white and hard to use.