Elon Musk's Checkered Views: The Missteps in His Understanding of Chess and Sports

With the advent of AI and leaps of advancements on a weekly basis, everyone’s imagination is running wild on what it can do, and how will the future be; the palpable anxiety is quite understandable. In the midst of regular folks worrying about losing their job in the future to machines, now Elon Musk has hit a hornet’s nest by saying computers will solve chess in a decade, and there won’t be much left for humans to do, meaning chess players may be out of commission. This is incorrect at many levels, besides, shows Elon has a poor understanding of the game and sports in general. Here’s why

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Elon tweeted “Computers are so much better than humans at chess, it’s absurd. I predict that chess will be essentially fully solved (like checkers) within 10 years.” This drew many reactions and rebuttals from the chess community and grandmasters. While most are arguing where computers can solve chess or not, the entire discussion is moot. Since the stone age, we have created tools to reduce our efforts, hard labour and focus on what makes us humans: our minds. The rise of intelligent machines will sustain the process of us delegating menial tasks to the machines to free up more time for love, curiosity, creativity, beauty, joy.?

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Let’s keep chess aside for a minute and ask why do we play any sport? Why does countries bid and spend billions to host the Olympics, why are soccer stars paid more than brain surgeons, why is IPL’s brand value worth USD 11 billion? Sports satisfy the human desire for competition and achievement. They offer a platform to set goals, face challenges, and experience the satisfaction of accomplishment. International leagues have each participating nation’s pride running on the game.?

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Beside competitive sports played by professionals, why do we play sports in our homes, neighbourhoods and clubs???It has less to do with medal tally and more about personal improvement. As an average marathon runner myself, my real eye on the prize was the ability to overcome my fatigue and push myself out of my comfort zone to achieve something. It was about the discipline to train, commitment to overcome laxity and achieve a level of personal growth.?

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Imagine a running coach telling you, ‘no matter how fast you run, cars will be faster than you’. True words of wisdom and motivation! #LOL. This is somewhat similar to Elon Musk’s argument that computers are smarter than humans and it will ‘solve’ chess.

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First off, there’s nothing to be solved in chess, it is a cognitive game where people flex their ability to strategize, find tactical motifs and achieve victory. Today, AI driven chess engines like AlphaZero from Google’s Deepmind are formidable opponents not just to human, but for other lesser powered chess engines like Stockfish, Leela, etc.,?

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As far back as 1997, when Garry Kasparov, the then world chess champion, lost to IBM’s Deep Blue, machines have been constantly better at the game then humans. There is no doubt that advanced AI will play better chess in the future, the same way a bullet train may go faster than current day speeds. But is there anyone trying to outrun a bullet train?

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Elon also shared his experience of playing chess in his childhood,?“I did (play chess) as a child, but found it to be too simple to be useful in real life: a mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only 2 players, both sides exact same pieces, etc.”

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The statement ‘too simple to be useful in real life’ is a matter of uninformed personal opinion. Consider Demis Hassabis, the founder of Deepmind. WSJ called him ‘The Chess Master Trying to Propel Google's AI Push’. He was a chess player as a child, and when Deepmind released AlphaGo and AlphaZero, which plays Go and Chess respectively. Demis' strategy was simple, first solve intelligence, and then solve everything humanity needs. Unlike Elon’s brushing aside of a classical strategy mind exercise called chess, Demis has made something out of it, and the hopes of a trillion dollar company like Google is now riding on this chess master’s moves.

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The other statements in Musk’s tweet like 8x8, fog of war, spawn are only demonstrating his ignorance about the game. A?9x9 chess set exists, and it’s called Shogi, a popular variant in Japan. Fog of war is also a variant, you can try playing that on chess.com, and ‘spawn’ in chess is an end game strategy, the potential of a pawn reaching the opponent’s starting rank to be spawned as a queen or other piece!?

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If all of these are insufficient to refute Elon’s poor understanding of sports in general, He can surely look at Noland Arbaugh, a paraplegic who was the first recipient of Musk’s Neuralink chip, who uses the his new found ability to control a computer telepathically to play online chess!?

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When you are a billionaire and owner of a popular internet town square, you sure have huge reach and impact, it may be useful to take a moment to ponder on an opinion before telling the whole world about it. When life gives you chess, be a Demis and not an Elon.