Recently, I listened to the Joe Rogan Podcast’s episode with Magnus Carlsen. It was a really interesting conversation, and more interesting were the responses of Magnus. I was quite humbled by that. He beautifully explained the impact of AI on the game of chess. There cannot be any doubt that chess players are some of the smartest athletes in the world. To hear that even a simple chess app on an iPhone can easily defeat the best chess players today is nothing short of a revelation. I think what Magnus is proposing makes a lot of sense. When traditional chess is pretty much figured out by AI (not 100%), it would be a lot more fun to start exploring other variations of chess, like Fischer Random or Freestyle Chess, where the difference between human understanding and AI understanding is so vast that humans would likely not be able to mimic the engine moves as easily as they do in traditional chess.
Magnus was also quite candid in accepting that he is generally considered lazy by many in the chess community. Interestingly, Magnus attributed a lot of his success to this “lazy” style of thinking and computing chess moves. He said that when he was a kid, a chess tutor was engaged for him, and when that chess tutor started giving homework, Magnus became disinterested in such a learning process because, according to him, homework is antithetical to the fun element and makes a task onerous in nature. It is a very important observation. Whenever learning is not fun, people inevitably lose interest in the long run. Keeping things simple and voluntary ensures that one is able to enjoy the game or any other task in an enjoyable way, thereby being able to devote more time to such tasks.
Magnus is truly a legend, and petty incidents like Jeansgate, sharing the first prize, or his love for Freestyle Chess must not be interpreted in a hyper-technical manner to imply that he is arrogant or whimsical. In fact, it is precisely the opposite. More power to Magnus. Hoping to see more quality content from him and others in the field of chess.