Garry Kasparov: Look again at Terminator - it's about humans making an alliance with older machines, and winning

Don't worry about apocalyptic, Terminator-style AI fears - everything will be fine in the end, says Kasparov at today's DTExpo

Former chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov used his opening keynote at day two of London's Digital Transformation Expo (DTExpo) to debunk Terminator-style fears of artificial intelligence (AI).

While the Terminator series of films portrayed a conflict-strewn world in which machines sought to wipe out humans, Kasparov reminded the audience that subsequent films beyond the original were "about humans making an alliance with older machines, and winning".

Discussing the long-held paranoia about advances in AI by the general public, Kasparov complained that "Hollywood made great contributions to this brainwashing exercise. I always try to confront it by this introduction - do you feel optimistic?"

When you look at the Terminator, in the first film, humans won. But in the second and third, it's always about humans making an alliance with an older machine

Kasparov explained how he considers himself to have a unique position in the human versus AI situation, losing as he did a 1997 chess game ("it was a rematch - I won in 1996", he reminded the audience) against IBM's Deep Blue machine, and watching AI grow in power ever since.

He said that by today's standards Deep Blue "was about as intelligent as an alarm clock", so comparatively modern machines are punching considerably higher.

"[So] I had to understand what's next for me, for the game of chess, and for artificial intelligence," said Kasparov. "I realised it's not about us versus them - you can't beat them, [so] join them."

Kasparov is convinced that, while AI works well "in closed" systems, human creativity is extremely difficult to replicate and replace in other contexts.

"As anything that can be qualified as a closed system - like chess or Texas Hold ‘Em poker - a machine will eventually do a better job. A machine won't make human mistakes, so in the end it will be better. "But we as humans can guide machines in open-ended spaces."

Kasparov, however, wants to revise the Hollywood-style fear-mongering cliché over evermore intelligent machines.

"When you look at the Terminator, in the first film, humans won. But in the second and third, it's always about humans making an alliance with an older machine - and they always win.

"So machines can't beat an older machine if it has human assistance. We can find that optimism."