Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe

by Steven H. Strogatz

On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team at Google stunned the chess world with its announcement of a deep-learning program called AlphaZero. The program taught itself chess by playing millions of games against itself and learning from its mistakes. In a matter of hours, it became the best chess player in history. Not only could it easily defeat all the best human masters (it didn’t even bother to try), it crushed the reigning computer world champion of chess. In a hundred-game match against Stockfish, a truly formidable program, AlphaZero scored twenty-eight wins and seventy-two draws. It didn’t lose a single game. The scariest point is that AlphaZero showed insight. It played like no computer ever has, intuitively and beautifully, with a romantic, attacking style. It played gambits and took risks. In some games it paralyzed Stockfish and toyed with it. It seemed malevolent and sadistic. And it was creative beyond words, playing moves no grandmaster or computer would ever dream of making. It had the spirit of a human and the power of a machine. It was humankind’s first glimpse of a terrifying new kind of intelligence.