[dwaltrip]

You don't think Deep Blue was inspirational to folks who were perhaps deciding if they wanted to pursue AI research?

The same holds for AlphaGo and Watson. Also, my understanding is that they are more technically interesting than Deep Blue. Given how recent these projects are, their legacy is only beginning to unfold.

I agree with you that applying this tech to domains other than games is no easy challenge. But I would be very surprised, in the long run, if events like this are not documented as key steps along the way at some point in the future.