Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

by Garry Kasparov

In this self-interview in his 1976 book, Tal is discussing what was going through his head while he was contemplating a knight sacrifice in a game against another Soviet Grandmaster. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply to my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove quite useless. As a result, my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the famous “tree of variations,” from which the trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity. And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by [well-known Soviet children’s poet] Korney Chukovsky: Oh, what a difficult job it was To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus. I don’t know from what associations the hippopotamus got onto the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I was trying at this time to work out: Just how would you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, even a rope ladder. After a lengthy consideration, I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully, “Well, let it drown!” And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went off from the chess board just as he had come on. Of his own accord. And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not...