When he was only 13 years old, Magnus Carlsen was able to reach a technical draw in a tournament against Kasparov and defeated Anatoly Karpov, just one month before becoming the second youngest grandmaster in chess history.
Considered by many the best chess player in history, the Norwegian has been able to accumulate great tournaments under his belt, reaching an elo of 2,800 points at 19 years old.
Although at first it wasn’t all about chess, since he wouldn’t learn until he was 5 years old; before, At only 2 years old, he was already able to assemble puzzles of 50 pieces and was a big fan of Lego, recommended for children from 10 years of age.
The great chess prodigy, at 34 years old, has never shown its recognition of the great language models –LLM, for its acronym in English– of artificial intelligence, a characteristic that Carlsen has always carried with him.
For its part, it has always qualified the chess games of these LLMs as «children’s games»which is why he is not a big fan of the supposed intelligence of these models.
According to the Indian Express media, Carlsen has confessed that He got to play with great personalities from the world of AIcomo Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg o Demis Hassabis.
Magnus Carlsen against Elon Musk, Sam Altman and other technology gurus
Sam Altman assures that «I wasn’t very good» at chessduring a tournament in which they participated in 2022, and in which the CEO of OpenAI played alongside Anish Giri, a Dutch chess player. In a humorous tone, he assures that Giri was not very happy about participating with Altman, even though he described him as «a very intelligent person.»
As for Zuckerberg, he assures that He had practically the same knowledge of chess as Altmanalthough he learned very quickly.
«He didn’t know much about chess, but he was a bit like Sam Altman. I thought he was even better. He learned very quickly, formed his own opinions very quickly.which I thought was impressive. It’s a useful skill. They weren’t always right, something to be expected, but there were good reasons,» he confesses.
Regarding Elon Musk, Carlsen has explained that he has been able to see him in person, although he has never spoken directly with him. «He is famous for his disrespect towards chess players and towards the game, which I can understand to a certain extent, since Musk is famous for his disrespect towards chess players«, he expresses.
«It’s obviously simple, as it didn’t take machines that long to master it, compared to other games,» he continues. «But Chess is also complex and very difficult to play«.
Beyond his obvious criticism of Musk’s position on an ancient game like chess, Carlsen also tells a funny anecdote with Demis HassabisCEO of DeepMind Technologies, AI advisor to the UK government and recent Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
During a tournament in London, both were able to share a board and Carlsen thinks he is «rigid» in his chess moves, playing with white always the same openingthe only one who knew how to play Hassabis.
The CEO of DeepMind He asked Carlsen for advice regarding his opponent’s movementssince fans usually face each other if they reach the final, something that happened in said tournament. According to the world teacher, Hassabis forgot everything.
«What he has done for chess is fantastic, but what he has done for humanity with medicine is obviously even better«acknowledges Carlsen.
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