Ok so what’s so special about Deep Blue?

Deep Blue was best known for winning chess matches against the reigning world chess champion, Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. In 1996, Deep Blue lost to Kasparov in the first 6 games. The upgraded 1997 version though beat Kasparov comfortably, winning two games and drawing three. Deep Blue’s victory is considered a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence. But there’s more to this Deep Blue story.

After Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue, he had an idea. He wondered what would happen if humans and supercomputers could team up in chess. In 1998, he set up the first advanced chess match between himself and Veselin Topalov, where they were each paired with a powerful computer. This evolved into a freestyle chess tournament in the following years. In this freestyle tournament (2005), humans, computers, and teams of humans and computers were all allowed to compete.

If you didn’t make the connection yet, the team of humans and computers are known as Centaurs.

Do you know who the winner was in this tournament?

It was not “Hydra”, the world’s best chess supercomputer at that time. Even grandmasters didn’t win this tournament. The winner was not even teams of grandmasters and supercomputers.

Surprised…Shocked!

So, who was the winner?

The winner was a team of 2 amateur chess players (Steven Cramton and Zackary Stephen) and 3 ordinary computers. This centaur literally crushed all the competition.

Shocking, isn’t it?

How is it that two normal people paired with normal computers could beat super computers as well as chess grandmasters paired with super computers?

Mike Beneschan in his post “Centaurs are More Powerful than Computers” wrote, “In chess, there is a difference between strategy and tactics. Tactics are short combinations of moves to win advantages. Good players can memorize thousands of tactics and board positions, but computers are immensely better than us at memory. Strategy, on the other hand, is understanding the big picture of the chess game, managing the small battles so you can win the big ones. Humans are better at strategy than computers.

The centaur team did not beat the chess supercomputer Hydra because of better tactics, but because of softer skills, the skills humans do best. Kasparov noted that the humans in the centaur team were the best at coaching multiple computers to get the best answer.”

Their success was attributed to a set of skills that had little or nothing to do with playing chess. Their skill that best augmented the tactical prowess of the computer was their ability to uncover, digest and distribute information.

Mike added, “When Deep Blue beat Kasparov, it showed the strength of computational power. But when a centaur beat Hydra, it showed the strength of humans doing what humans do best.”

The same applies to the work you do.

The soft side is always the hard side, more so in our industry/profession. As I have often repeated, “Personal Finance is more about Personal than it is about Finance.”

Your work centres around the intersection of humans, money, and life (not to mention emotions, biases, blind spots and behaviour). Computers can solve for what’s already answered. By this I mean computers can perform the most complex calculations in a few nanoseconds. Any tactical advantage will be nullified by a machine. But can any algorithm or AI program tell you how Raju is likely to react to the stock market going up or down tomorrow. The answer to this is not fixed. A computer can only answer when it actually knows the answer, but Raju’s (or our) assumptions, biases, blind spots, and behaviour are not programmed in any supercomputer.

Thus, real financial professionals too work on building the following skills – asking great questions, having amazing first meetings, listening, having powerful conversations, storytelling – from a perspective of building a very strong emotional connection and trust with their clients /prospects.