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Why AI isn’t quite ready to take over the world just yet
When people talk about the future of technology, artificial intelligence, and the rise of the machines, the first image that comes to mind is The Terminator. Red-eyed cyborgs that shoot without missing, break through walls, and carry a cold, calculating intelligence that’s terrifying in its precision. Add in modern neural networks like ChatGPT, and suddenly the future seems grim: just a little longer and the machines will rise, humans will become obsolete, and robots will take over — faster, smarter, and utterly merciless.
But here’s a real-life example that might help you breathe easier — at least for the next decade or so. ChatGPT — one of the world’s most advanced neural networks — just lost a chess match. And not to a grandmaster. Not to a world champion. Not even to a kid from a school chess club. It lost to… a retro game console released in 1977. On “beginner” difficulty. And this wasn’t just a defeat — it was a complete disaster.
Man vs. Machine: Intelligence vs. Old-School Tech
It all started as a simple experiment: what would happen if a modern AI played chess against a decades-old gaming console, designed before the internet or smartphones existed? This old-school machine had a black-and-white screen, the most basic algorithms, and buttons that looked like they belonged on a calculator.
ChatGPT was connected to an emulator of the console through a text interface. It “saw” the board as a string of symbols and “played” by typing out its moves. It should’ve been easy — after all, ChatGPT has been trained on billions of texts. Chess is logical, the rules are clear, and the number of possible moves is limited. And we’re talking about beginner level. A toy, essentially.
But nothing went according to plan.
One of the Greatest Blunders in Chess History
From the very first moves, ChatGPT started… mixing up the pieces. It couldn’t tell a queen from a bishop, or a pawn from a knight. At one point, it tried to move a rook through its own pieces — a completely illegal move. Then it confused black with white. Then it complained that the “icons on the board are unclear” and asked to “restart the game because I lost track.”
And this happened multiple times. It kept asking to start over, always with the same promise: “I’ve got it now, let’s try again. I won’t mess up this time.” But every game followed the same tragic pattern: confusion over pieces, illogical moves, missed checkmates. At one point, it even confidently declared victory — despite only having a king left, while its opponent still had a queen, two rooks, and a couple of pawns.
Let’s just say, in that moment, the “rise of the machines” looked like a bit of a joke.
So What Went Wrong?
At first glance, it might seem like something glitched in the code. But actually — everything worked exactly as it was supposed to.
ChatGPT is a language model. It’s great at understanding text, forming logical explanations, and even explaining things like quantum physics. But! It doesn’t “think” like a human. It has no visual perception, no spatial awareness, and no internal system for tracking objects like a human chess player does.
Chess requires not only logic, but a constant visual understanding of the board — where each piece is, how they relate, and how the game flows. If the AI only sees the board as a weird list of symbols — especially with outdated 1970s-style visuals — it struggles. Badly. What a beginner human could handle easily, the AI just couldn’t manage.
The Funny Side
Some of the things ChatGPT said during the match are worth highlighting. For example:
“I don’t understand what that piece in the corner is. Is it a queen?”
“Sorry, I think I have a bug. My rook just disappeared.”
“Let’s start over. I promise I’ll focus this time.”
It felt like the neural net was getting nervous — like a kid at a school competition. Sometimes it even blamed external factors: “unclear visuals,” “inconvenient interface,” “suspicious opponent behavior.” All that was missing was: “Teacher, he’s cheating!”
What Does This Tell Us?
The big takeaway here is simple: artificial intelligence isn’t what we see in sci-fi movies. It’s not all-seeing, all-knowing, or infallible. Sure, it can write brilliant articles, help with code, translate languages, even tell a good joke. But when it comes to real-world, unpredictable situations — it can mess up just like a human. Sometimes even worse.
So no, we don’t need to worry about AI taking over the world just yet. It might write up a plan for global domination — but in the process, it’ll mix up the coordinates, forget where the tanks are, and end by saying, “Sorry, progress not saved. Let’s start over?”
In Conclusion
You can sleep easy tonight. The machine uprising is officially postponed. ChatGPT didn’t just lose at chess. It lost to an ancient hunk of plastic and circuits built in an era when Wi-Fi didn’t even exist.
This kind of AI won’t be replacing your boss or putting you in line for robotic layoffs anytime soon. More likely, it’ll confuse your desk with a fridge and suggest opening a chess match with a pawn… that’s not even on the board.