Elon Musk feels that “one day chess will be fully solved”; what does world number one Magnus Carlsen think?

Elon Musk and Magnus Carlsen BENGALURU: Elon Musk decided to fight chess earlier this week. The world’s richest man on X declared that chess would one day be “fully solved”, the way computers cracked checkers in 2007, his logic being that most legal moves are so obviously bad that AI could eventually map the entire game.Chess.com’s response was a master class in brevity. “Skills problem,” they wrote. Musk doubled down anyway, insisting that chess “is hard for humans but not for computers” and would eventually be “fully solved like a checker”, before almost coyly admitting that he had spent his evening “arguing with some random intern” running the chess website’s account.Chess.com wasn’t going to let it slide. The person on the other end, it turned out, was actually a full-time employee. The internet, predictably, had a field day.Current world number one and five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen was asked about the emergence of artificial intelligence in chess during an interview with Indian media on the sidelines of the ongoing Global Chess League (GCL) on Thursday.“I’m not a computer expert so I don’t know if it will work out,” shrugged Carlsen, currently playing for defending APL champions the Pipers.He offered one technical fix, gently. Chess is not unsolved so much as “half-solved” in the sense that matters most to players. “We’re pretty confident it’s a draw, and it’s a draw in many ways. The margin is quite large,” a somewhat more modest claim than Musk’s vision of AI eventually counting chess down to the last legal move.“AI and computers in general have made the game much more accessible,” he said. “Now you can track it, see the score, you can improve much faster.What is his motivation to come to India for GCL?When asked what actually motivates him to keep appearing in a franchise-based league like the GCL, he argued for team chess with equal directness. “It’s a really good format,” he said. “I’ve said it from the beginning that we need team formats in chess that are really exciting. The black and white format is very good.”He wasn’t shy about the parts he’d still tweak, pointing to the two-second increment added after turn 40 as a concession to players he clearly has no patience for.“I’d rather not have the two seconds after 40 moves,” he explained. “This was implemented at the request of players who are incompetent and lazy at times.

Magnus Carlsen in Pipers football

“The format where you have absolutely clear white against black, the matches are spread out, which is very good. The match is always going to be a decider, unless there are six draws. I think there are a lot of good things about it.Regarding India specifically, Carlsen framed his regular return trips almost as a reset button. “I also like to go to India every other year because I need a year off to remind myself how packed the tournaments are,” he continued with a smile, before adding warmly, “But I really enjoy some of them. There’s not that atmosphere or excitement in the East.”