A Deep Blue Funk

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, May 18 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post

My heart goes out to Garry Kasparov for suffering that humiliating loss to the computer
Deep Blue. It must be terrible for the chess champion now, to walk down the street and
have some punk kid hold up a Walkman and taunt, "Hey, Garry, maybe you can beat
this!" I imagine Kasparov can't even pass a Radio Shack without breaking into hives.

I have some sense of how awful Kasparov must feel. I was a pretty fast runner when I
was a kid, and I lost a 100-yard dash to a machine. It's called a car.

(On the night Kasparov lost the deciding game to the computer, the TV anchors
reported "the historic defeat" in hushed, somber tones like they were talking about
famine in Chechnya, or the death of Gandhi. I lose to the video poker machine all the
time, and Sam Donaldson doesn't come over to interview me about it. Listen, machines
are supposed to be better than humans. An artillery cannon can pitch a ball faster than
Roger Clemens; professional baseball is not wringing its hands in despair.)

Frankly, Kasparov disappointed me. He was a sore loser! He grumped and groused
and actually intimated that the computer cheated.

How can you cheat in chess? Everything is out in the open. Eighty million people are
watching from all over the globe. Experts with goatees and bad teeth are analyzing every
move seconds after it is made. And even if it were possible to cheat, to furtively move a
piece, how would the machine do it? Have you seen this thing? It looks like the World
Trade Center. It doesn't even have an elbow or a pinkie. (Actually, Kasparov said he
was suspicious because he thought the computer made erratic moves, some stunning,
some dooflike. I think the tip-off was when the computer followed a particularly brilliant
move that put Kasparov in check by shoving a pawn across the board and then flashing
its lights to spell out "King me!")

For the life of me, I do not know what the fuss is all about. Playing chess is not like
thinking. Yes, chess is strategic. But it is robotic. There are only 64 squares. Every
possible move has been made before, a million times, by persons with surnames like
Vrobichefsy. Their strategies even have official names, like the Fortensky Gambit and
the Rosenblatt Conceit. You can just plug the whole history of chess into a computer. It
is not as though chess is a truly creative process, like, say . . . humor writing.

What if I kept using the same jokes all over again, time and again, week after week? I
mean, what kind of a pathetic hack would I be then? I would be no better than the
Washington Post cafeteria, which looks like a bathroom at a bus station!

Still, the Kasparov-Deep Blue match has the world rattled. This is a time when we, as
humans, must band together. All of humankind is waiting for someone to step forward
for the species, and I think that someone just might as well be . . . Joey Buttafuoco, who
will beat the crap out of that machine with a tire iron.

No, just kidding. Fellow humans, I, Tony Kornheiser, will do it. I have decided to offer
a machine a chance to match me, joke for joke, in my column.

I figure the risk is minimal. How could a bucket of electronic components possibly
match my legendary ability to weave subtlety and nuance into carefully constructed
humor, deftly employing literary allusions and such?

Okay, let the joke-off begin.

Here is my opening gambit:

Your mother is so fat, they use her corset to snag planes on an aircraft carrier.

(Oh, wait, I forgot to deftly employ a literary allusion. Try this: Your mother,
Clytemnestra, is so fat, they use her corset to snag planes on an aircraft carrier.)

Okay, machine, now it is your turn:

What a dork! It couldn't come up with anything.

Excuse me, Tony, but that's because you asked a cappuccino machine.

Ah. Well, all right. Let's go to one of those word computers, the kind that's
programmed to write poetry, correct spelling, etc.

Okay, machine. You're on:

Good evening, esteemed human consumers of Tony Kornheiser's column. I am
VRB-23766, and I just got in from Silicon Valley, and boy are my microprocessors
tired. Ho-ho.

Beep.

Whew. This is a tough crowd. Is it hot in here or am I havin' a mainframe meltdown?
Where did they get this crowd? At a funeral?

Beep.

Good evening, esteemed human consumers of Tony Kornheiser's column. Why did
Garry Kasparov's wife leave him? Because he was a stale mate. Ha-ha. I slay myself.
Unrecoverable Disk Error. Abort? Retry? Reboot?

Beep.

Hey, you've been a great audience. Thank you, and log off.

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