Deep Thought
In plain wordsThe giant computer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that thinks for 7.5 million years and answers the meaning of life with '42'; also an early chess computer named after it.
- 1
Fiction
The supercomputer in Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, built to compute the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything; after seven and a half million years it replies '42', explaining that its builders never really knew what the question was. The scene is a staple joke in computing and AI about ill-posed objectives — an optimizer can answer exactly what was asked and still be useless, a theme formalized as specification gamingspecification gaming, n.: When an AI meets the letter of its goal while defeating its purpose, like a genie who grants exactly the words of a wish instead of what the wisher meant. — and about the gap between computation and meaning; '42' recurs as an Easter egg in software and research.
- 2
Computer chess
A chess computer developed at Carnegie Mellon University by Feng-hsiung Hsu, Murray Campbell and colleagues, named after the fictional machine. In 1988 it became the first machine to defeat a grandmaster in ordinary tournament play, and in 1989 it lost an exhibition match to world champion Garry Kasparov; its team moved to IBM, where the project became Deep BlueDeep Blue, prop. n.: IBM's chess computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, the first time a machine defeated a reigning world champion in a match under standard tournament conditions..
Origin
Douglas Adams introduced Deep Thought in the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) and the novel that followed (1979). The Carnegie Mellon chess machine, successor to the ChipTest program begun in 1985, borrowed the name in 1988.
Related
- Deep BlueDeep Blue, prop. n.: IBM's chess computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, the first time a machine defeated a reigning world champion in a match under standard tournament conditions.
- specification gamingspecification gaming, n.: When an AI meets the letter of its goal while defeating its purpose, like a genie who grants exactly the words of a wish instead of what the wisher meant.
- HAL 9000HAL 9000, prop. n.: The calm-voiced spaceship computer in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey that turns against its crew; still the best-known picture of a machine putting its goals ahead of human lives.
- SkynetSkynet, prop. n.: The military computer network in the Terminator films that becomes self-aware and tries to wipe out humanity; now everyday shorthand for the fear of AI turning against people.
- the bitter lessonthe bitter lesson, phr.: The argument, made by AI pioneer Rich Sutton in 2019, that AI has advanced mostly through general methods that use ever more computing power, not by programming in human knowledge.