In May 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a highly publicized chess match. The match is cited as the exemplar of the oft-romanticized battle between mankind and machine.

What happened next is not as well known, but perhaps more important for all mankind—including lawyers. Chess champions developed the idea that, instead of pitting humans against machines, they should explore the true heights of chess mastery through man-and-machine teams. The man-and-machine teams came to be known as “cyborgs.”