When we design systems to dominate benchmarks, we produce gold medalists. Deep Blue played chess at a superhuman level, yet it could do nothing else.
What makes the silver medalist so interesting? I have returned to this question many times, because beneath its simplicity lies a useful lens for understanding both human intelligence and artificial intelligence. In high school, I happened to know someone who won the gold medal at the International Math Olympiad, and when he described the experience, it was clear that his victory came not from encountering wholly unfamiliar ideas but from something closer to exhaustive preparation. He explained that he recognized nearly every problem on the exam, or at least its structure, and felt that he had worked ten times harder than the person who won the silver.
The majority of problems were not true surprises. They were variations on themes he had already mastered. He was unquestionably brilliant. Yet the more we discussed it, the clearer it became that his brilliance had been channeled almost entirely toward one narrow objective. He knew how to win the gold, and he succeeded. But the silver medalist fascinated him. In his view, the silver medalist had done far less work, achieved nearly the same outcome, and retained more energy and curiosity for everything else. That economy of effort made the silver medalist, in his estimation, more interesting. In the long run, he suspected the silver medalist would accomplish more.
The gold had required near-total optimization. The silver retained degrees of freedom. This distinction matters for how we think about AI. When we design systems to dominate benchmarks, we produce gold medalists. Deep Blue is the classic example. It played chess at a superhuman level, yet it could do nothing else. Kasparov, who lost to it, had a mind that extended far beyond the 64 squares of the board. He could play chess, certainly, but he could also think metaphorically, strategically, and psychologically. Deep Blue was the gold medalist distilled to its essence. Kasparov was a human being with range.