Starfleet Academy’s Kobayashi Maru exam is designed to test cadets’ decision-making skills in a no-win scenario. Garry Kasparov’s loss to IBM’s Deep Blue in chess was initially attributed to the computer’s superiority, but a programming bug may have played a role. Kasparov was the youngest chess champion in 1985 and is now a human rights activist.
In the Star Trek universe, cadets attending Starfleet Academy must take the Kobayashi Maru final exam. Because the test is rigged so that no cadet can successfully rescue ship and crew, the purpose of the exam is simply to observe the cadet’s decisions while in a command situation. Likewise, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov had the Deep Blue supercomputer to keep him humble. The supercomputer was developed by IBM and was supposed to be as good as any human in the ancient game of chess. Kasparov had boasted that no computer could beat him, but Deep Blue had. Years later, however, some scientists now believe Deep Blue’s victory was actually due to a programming bug. According to one of Deep Blue’s programmers, at one point the computer couldn’t decide which move to make, and ended up having a problem. -Sacrificial move that seemed excessively sophisticated to Kasparov, making the Grand Master nervous. The schedule was tweaked so Blue couldn’t repeat the mistake, but Kasparov was already rattled by the move and it affected his mental game and subsequent game decisions. Deep Blue dominated game two.
Read more about Garry Kasparov:
In 1985, Kasparov became the youngest chess champion in the world at the age of 22.
Kasparov initially supported both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin in their efforts to create a democratic government in Russia. He has since become a vocal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kasparov retired from professional chess in 2005 and is now president of the Human Rights Foundation’s International Council.
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