What Did Magnus Carlsen Learn From The Most Advanced Chess Engine?
Many call him the greatest to play the game, and after meeting AlphaZero, the current most advanced chess engine, he’s gotten even better.
“Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence — in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement — wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”
— Eliezer Yudkowsky
Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen is the current world chess champion. His style of play was already several paces ahead of other top players. And in 2017 he was given a boost by a next-generation chess engine.
Chess engines have come a long way.
On May 11, 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue shook the world and became the first computer to beat a world chess champion.
Over twenty years after Deep Blue’s win, chess students use engines to analyze their own games. In 2017 AlphaZero, created by the company DeepMind, defeated world-champion computer programs Stockfish and Elmo. Then DeepMind subsequently released 10 games from AlphaZero’s defeat of Stockfish.
After studying AlphaZero’s games, Magnus said, “In essence, I have become a very different player in terms of…
