(CNN) -- In 1997, Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. It seemed like a watershed moment, recalling the rise of the machines long prophesied in science fiction. Yet in 2005, a freestyle chess tournament featured teams of humans partnering with computers in various combinations. Shockingly, two amateurs using three fairly weak laptops emerged victorious, beating grand masters and supercomputers in turn. This contrast is fittingly emblematic of two great visionaries of computer science, Marvin Minsky and J.C.R. Licklider. Minsky wrote canonical theories of self-replicating artificial intelligence and co-founded MIT's A.I. lab. Licklider proposed an alternate vision in his landmark paper, "Man-Computer Symbiosis". In Licklider's view, human intelligence should be complemented by machines, not replaced: "Men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions. ..."
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Shyam Sankar: Some say computers could attain artificial intelligence superior to humans
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A more realistic approach is to envision computers aided by human intelligence, he says
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Computers can spot patterns from the past but can't anticipate as people can, he says
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Sankar: Human thought, aided by computer power, can make sense of "big data"
relying solely on computers as @placeholder theorized it remains tantalizing, yet distant.