The 1997 chess game that thrust AI into the spotlight

A file photo shows chess enthusiasts watching Kasparov on a TV monitor as he holds his head in his hands at the start of the sixth and final match on May 11, 1997 against IBM's Deep Blue computer in New York. Since the victory of the Deep Blue computer against Kasparov in 1997, the machine has continued to demonstrate its ability to surpass human beings in increasingly complex tasks... without still second to none in terms of adaptability and versatility. — AFP

PARIS: With his hand pushed firmly into his cheek and his eyes fixed on the table, Garry Kasparov shot a final dark glance at the chessboard before storming out of the room: the king of chess had just been beaten by a computer.

May 11, 1997 was a watershed for the relationship between man and machine, when the artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer Deep Blue finally achieved what developers had been promising for decades.