Back To The Seventies

You can read an interview on Medium in which the economist and one-time chess player Tyler Cowen talks to Garry Kasparov. (You can also listen to the interview if you prefer.) There's a good gag about pieces on Medium - "they're neither rare, nor well done" - but the chess bits at least are diverting enough, and though I don't care much for subject or interviewer, readers might be advised to ignore my opinions and look for themselves.

Naturally the questioning is mostly the usual patball, do-you-have-any-further-wisdom-to-add that Kasparov usually enjoys - not once in all the coverage of his new book have I see him asked whether he is really some kind of authority in the field of Artificial Intelligence, let alone whether he actually knows any more about American or Russian politics than any other clown with too many followers on Twitter.

Let it pass, it's no worse than the usual and rather more enlightening than most, provided you concentrate on the chess.

I thought I'd pick this nit though. Cowen and Kasparov have this exchange:

Not just close, Garry: in the rating list of January 1979 Timman was ranked joint fifth, with Polugaevsky.

A small and unimportant error, but at least it's Kasparov's field of expertise. I wonder how many experts in AI, or in US or Ukrainian/Russian politics, are queueing up to see what they can learn from Garry Kasparov?