Module 1 · Section 1 of 3

In 1997, the world watched a machine beat the greatest chess player alive. Garry Kasparov — undisputed world champion, a man who had dominated the game for over a decade — lost to a computer called Deep Blue. Not once in a practice round. In a formal match, in front of the world, with everything on the line.

The match made headlines everywhere. But what got lost in the noise was the more interesting question: what did Deep Blue actually do? How did it work? And what does a chess computer from the late 1990s tell us about the AI systems reshaping work and business today?

More than any textbook definition, the Deep Blue story gives you a mental model for what AI is — and what it isn’t. By the end of this module, you’ll understand the difference between computation and cognition, why pattern matching is not the same as thinking, and why that distinction matters every time you decide whether to trust an AI output or push back on it.