Mark Manson AI and chess newsletter

"Five minutes each week that might change your life." In 2005, two amateurs from New Hampshire entered a chess tournament full of grandmasters and supercomputers. The amateurs won. The event was called freestyle chess, and there was one very technical, very complicated rule: Do whatever you want. Play alone, use a computer, use five computers, phone an Uzbekistani prodigy. Grandmasters teamed up with other grandmasters and the most sophisticated machines money could buy. Then there were these two guys: Steven Cramton and Zackary Stephen. If you’re a normal person, you probably don’t know that chess has ratings—but chess has ratings. Steven Cramton and Zackary Stephen had ratings of 1685 and ~1400. A grandmaster is rated 2500. A pro is rated around 2000. A 1400 is somebody who can beat his friends but gets annihilated in any tournament he enters. At the time, these two guys had three ordinary home PCs running four different chess programs, and because neither of them had a title, they had to win a qualifier just to get into the tournament. Then… they won the entire thing. In the final, Steven and Zackary beat a grandmaster who was working with a 2600-rated partner. People were so suspicious that many figured chess-god Gary Kasparov had to be secretly feeding them moves. Kasparov denied it, and years later explained what happened: Everyone in that tournament had machines. And once everyone has the machine, the machine stops being an advantage—and so does most of the chess knowledge, because the machine is doing the chess. The most important remaining variable was how well the players worked the machine. Steven and Zackary, because they didn’t really know how to play chess well, had built a better process for asking, checking, and deciding than anyone else in the field. So they won. That's exactly what’s happening to all of us with AI. You now have access to the same machine as every person you're competing with. That leveled the field—for about a minute. Then it started re-sorting, same as the chess world did, around the one variable the machine can't hand you: how well you know how to use the dumb thing. See you Monday, Mark P.S. So how well are you working the machine? Most people still treat AI like a fancy search bar instead of using it to beat the grandmasters. To stand out, step one is embarrassingly simple: know what the machine can do. That's why I read The Rundown, a free daily newsletter that gives me the latest AI news and shows me how to actually use the latest AI tools at work. It helps me keep up with where AI stands, where it's heading, and which tools deserve my attention. Over 2 million professionals from Apple, Google, and NASA already read it daily. Sign up free here. → FOLLOW FOR MORE markmanson.net Want to share this newsletter via text, social, or email? Simply copy and paste the following link: https://markmanson.net If you were forwarded this message, sign up to receive it each week here. It’s free. I never spam. About this newsletter: You are receiving this email because you signed up to my free newsletter. Each week, I send you a few powerful ideas, a few questions to ask yourself, and a few things to try in your life. If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter and all other updates from me, you can unsubscribe here. Disclaimer: By sending your breakthrough you are giving us your explicit consent to process the data and share it with our newsletter subscribers, MarkManson.net website visitors and on social media, including any sensitive data such as information regarding mental health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life or sexual orientation. You may opt out and/or request deletion of the data at any time. You acknowledge that once we have shared your breakthrough with the other email subscribers we can no longer delete the data from their mailboxes. Infinity Squared Media LLC, 2525 Ocean Park Blvd, Suite 200, S