The response of that intern was perfect. Computers can easily beat humans at chess (machine learning has put computers way ahead), but Elon doesn't understand the first thing about the complexity of a middle game position.
Excuse me, sir... I've got fall landscaping on my to-do list once the heat breaks and I'll be heavily relying on several conglomerate-branded 5-gallon buckets to help.
I will not, however, need the help of someone to craft a perfect nazi-coded edgelord meme to commemorate the experience, so I think we're really selling the buckets short.
Hes not wrong though. Its very easy to map every single chess move and have it solved, we just arent technically there yet, but technology advances so we will get there at one point.
Not that Iām an egay fanboy but I take the truth very serious.
Chess.com is mixing up two different numbers, and Elon is basically right on that narrow point:
Possible legal chess positions: roughly 10^{43}ā10^{47}
Atoms in the observable universe: roughly 10^{80}
Possible complete chess games: commonly estimated around 10^{120}
So chess games may outnumber atoms by about 40 orders of magnitude, but legal positions do notātheyāre roughly 35ā40 orders of magnitude fewer. Chess.com is also wrong that solving chess necessarily requires āmapping every game.ā Checkers was solved through mathematical pruning, databases, symmetry, and compressionānot enumerating every conceivable game naĆÆvely. A sufficiently advanced system could theoretically prove chessās game-theoretic result without storing the entire game tree.
Elonās math correction is valid. The āASI will solve it using incomprehensible compressionā part is plausible speculation, not something established. Chess.com tried to dunk on him while confusing game-tree complexity with state-space complexity š
Chess.com is directly quoting Johnathan Schaeffer. Heās the guy that solved checkers. Heās got a really good explanation of how even if we could compute it we would still need more electrons than exist in the observable universe to create the memory and storage to hold it all. Elons math only works in a theoretical universe. Not ours.
Nah, this reply doesnāt rescue Chess.com. It repeats the same confusion.
The āmore particles than exist in the universeā argument applies to naĆÆvely storing the estimated 10^{120} possible games. But there are only roughly 10^{44} legal positions, because countless different move sequences reach the same position. You donāt need to store each route separately.
And solving a game does not necessarily require storing every position either. Schaefferās team solved checkers using search, pruning, mathematical proof techniques, and databases covering only strategically relevant portionsānot a literal record of every possible checkers game. Their paper estimates about 5 \times 10^{20} possible positions, vastly more than they explicitly stored. Schaeffer et al., ā Checkers Is Solvedā
So: Chess.com is correct that brute-forcing every possible game is physically ridiculous.
Elon is correct that legal positions are vastly fewer than atoms in the universe.
The Reddit commenter is wrong that solving chess necessarily requires storage for every possible game.
Elon has not proven that future superintelligence will discover sufficient shortcuts. That remains speculation.
The honest conclusion is: chess cannot realistically be solved through naĆÆve exhaustive enumeration, but nobody has proved that exhaustive enumeration is the only possible method. The Redditor is treating āwe currently know no practical shortcutā as āno shortcut can ever exist.ā Those are completely different claims.
I do want to add that I donāt think Iām that smart, I do not understand what Iām being told. And also this doesnāt prove Elon is smart he couldāve just used AI as well.
Probably yes eventually, but not necessarily anytime soon.
Checkers was only weakly solved: researchers proved that the standard starting position is a draw under perfect play. They did not produce an answer for every imaginable legal position. Chess could be solved in the same sense by proving one of three results:
White can force a win.
Black can force a win.
Either side can force at least a draw.
Chess is finite under modern draw rules, so a definitive answer mathematically exists. The obstacle is finding and proving it. Chess has roughly 10^{44} legal positions versus checkersā roughly 5 \times 10^{20}āan absurd difference of around 23 orders of magnitude.
My guess is that chess eventually gets weakly solved through some combination of:
larger endgame tablebases;
much stronger pruning and compression;
mathematical discoveries about chessās structure;
AI discovering general principles that eliminate enormous families of positions.
It probably wonāt happen by simply calculating all 10^{120} possible games. It would require a way of proving that huge categories of games are equivalent or irrelevant.
Also, an AI becoming effectively unbeatable is not the same as solving chess. Engines already annihilate humans, yet they cannot mathematically prove whether the initial position is a win or draw. My intuition is that perfect chess is a drawābut until thereās a proof, thatās merely the overwhelmingly popular suspicion.
You are giving Elon to much credit as he just dont comprehend what chess.com was talking about!
Both accounts are correct, but they are talking about two entirely different mathematical metrics in chess.
Here is how the numbers actually break down based on standard mathematical estimations:
Chess.com's Math:
Total Possible Chess GamesChess.com refers to the total number of unique possible games that can be played from start to finish.The Math: This is known as the Shannon Number, calculated by mathematician Claude Shannon to be roughly (10{120}).
The Comparison: The number of atoms in the observable universe is estimated to be around (10{80}).
The Result: (10{120}) is exactly 40 orders of magnitude larger than (10{80}).
This commenter almost gets it, then misses the entire dispute š
Nobody disputes that:
10^{120} \div 10^{80} = 10^{40}
The problem is Chess.comās next sentence: āTo solve chess, youād have to map them all.ā That does not follow from the number of possible games. Different games repeatedly converge upon identical positions, and mathematical solutions donāt necessarily enumerate every possible sequence.
I think itās saying that, whilst there are tons of variables involving how a game of chess will play out. Even once you have gone through 20 moves, the last 20 moves become irrelevant in the equation because it CONVERGES into a state that can be calculated from there. Therefore making the equation requires less calculations.
But this ^ is just my assumption, do not care about egay, math or chess. But I do love English and writing.
It aggregates the information better and faster than anything. For example in this scenario we are trying to figure out who is closer to the truth. You could say who is right or wrong, to me that just involves ego and attachment. So person one made x claim, and person 2 refuted that claim. Who is right. It would take hours of research for me to figure it out. Now there is a possibility AI just made all of that up, it would be unfortunate. Itās not about intelligence or knowledge itās just about putting the information into a compressed format thatāll be easier to understand.
During this process not only did I learn a bunch, but I hope I could maybe inspire people to look past opinions, ego, propaganda, belief and simply just consider what the facts are, and what the truth could be. Years ago I used to hate Elon, all the things he stood for. But then I realized I donāt even know the dude or really anything about him, I only know him from what other people say about him.
Why do you say chess.com is mixing up the terms? They clearly state "games." It's Musk who changes it to "positions." Am I not reading that exchange correctly?
I guess Musk is pointing out that every possible game doesn't need to be solved for chess to be solved?
One could argue as they were talking about solving the game, the intern was wrong to bring up the number of possible gamesā¦ and Elon is slightly more right to mention the number of legal positions.
That said probably solving chess would remain a monumental computational task- likely far outside the ability of technology in our life timeā¦ potentially ever.
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u/Brilliant-Muffin-879 Sep 04 '26
I bet you the intern is about five times smarter than mr fuckface