Toward a General Theory of Expertise, ed. K. A. Ericsson and Jacqui Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
In 2009, Kahneman and Klein: D. Kahneman and G. Klein, “Conditions for Intuitive Expertise: A Failure to Disagree,” American Psychologist 64, no. 6 (2009): 515–26.
“kind” learning environments: Robin Hogarth’s fantastic book on learning environments is Educating Intuition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
“a more productive carrier”: L. Thomas, The Youngest Science (New York: Penguin, 1995), 22.
In a 1997 showdown: Kasparov was on the cover of the May 5, 1997, Newsweek, with the headline, “The Brain’s Last Stand.”
“Today the free chess app”: Kasparov and his aide-de-camp Mig Greengard were kind enough to answer my questions. Additional information came from a lecture Kasparov gave at Georgetown University on June 5, 2017, and Kasparov and Greengard’s book Deep Thinking (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017).
“you can get a lot further”: S. Polgar and P. Truong, Chess Tactics for Champions (New York: Random House Puzzles & Games, 2006), x.
“Human creativity was even more paramount”; “My advantage in calculating”: Kasparov and Greengard, Deep Thinking.
“freestyle chess”: For an excellent discussion of human-computer chess partnerships, see: T. Cowen, Average is Over (New York: Dutton, 2013).
His teammate, Nelson Hernandez: Hernandez kindly engaged in an extended back-and-forth, explaining to me the nuances of freestyle chess and providing me with documentation about tournaments. He estimated that Williams’s Elo rating in traditional chess would be about 1800.
In 2007, National Geographic TV: The program was “My Brilliant Brain.”
The first took place in the 1940s: A. D. de Groot, Thought and Choice in Chess (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008).
added a wrinkle: Chase and Simon’s chunking theory: W. G. Chase and H. A. Simon, “Perception in Chess,” Cognitive Psychology 4 (1973): 55–81.
if rigorous training had not begun by age twelve: F. Gobet and G. Campitelli, “The Role of Domain-Specific Practice, Handedness, and Starting Age in Chess,” Developmental Psychology 43 (2007): 159–72. For the different rates at which individuals progress, see: G. Campitelli and F. Gobet, “The Role of Practice in Chess: A Longitudinal Study,” Learning and Individual Differences 18, no. 4 (2007): 446–58.
Treffert studied savants: Treffert shared with me videos from his library of documentation on savants. His book Islands of Genius (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2012) is a great account of his research.
“What I heard seemed so unlikely”: A. Ockelford, “Another Exceptional Musical Memory,” in Music and the Mind, ed. I. Deliège, and J. W. Davidson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Other sources on savants and atonal music: L. K. Miller, Musical Savants (Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press, 1989); B. Hermelin et al., “Intelligence and Musical Improvisation,” Psychological Medicine 19 (1989): 447–57.
when artistic savants are briefly shown pictures: N. O’Connor and B. Hermelin, “Visual and Graphic Abilities of the Idiot-Savant Artist,” Psychological Medicine 17 (1987): 79–90. (Treffert has helped replace the term “idiot-savant” with “savant syndrome.”) See also: E. Winner, Gifted Children: Myths and Realities (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), ch. 5.
AlphaZero programmers touted: D. Silver et al., “Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm,” arXiv (2017): 1712.01815.
“In narrow enough worlds”: In addition to an interview with Gary Marcus, I used video of his June 7, 2017, lecture at the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, as well as several of his papers and essays: “Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal,” arXiv: 1801.00631; “In Defense of Skepticism About Deep Learning,” Medium, January 14, 2018; “Innateness, AlphaZero, and Artificial Intelligence,” arXiv: 1801.05667.
IBM’s Watson: For a balanced take on Watson’s challenges in healthcare—from one critic calling it “a joke,” to others suggesting it falls far short of the original hype but does indeed have value—see: D. H. Freedman, “A Reality Check for IBM’s AI Ambitions,” MIT Technology Review, June 27, 2017, online ed.
“The difference between winning at Jeopardy!”: The oncologist is Dr. Vinay Prasad. He said this to me in an interview, and also shared it on Twitter.
a report in the esteemed journal Nature: J. Ginsberg et al., “Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search Engine Query Data,” Nature 457 (2009): 1012–14.
double the prevalence: D. Butler, “When Google Got Flu Wrong,” Nature 494 (2013): 155–56; D. Lazer et al., “The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis,” Science 343 (2014): 1203–5.
“the essence of their job”: C. Argyris, “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1991.
subtitle of Schwartz’s paper: B. Schwartz, “Reinforcement-Induced Behavioral Stereotypy: How Not to Teach People to Discover Rules,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 111, no. 1 (1982):23–59.
“Big-C creator”: E. Winner, “Child Prodigies and Adult Genius: A Weak Link,” in The