Being Played

I'm a very bad chess player. I stopped playing it when my older brother took it up when we were kids. He picked on me, as older brothers will, and took a certain sadistic pleasure in making me feel stupid. He taught me how to play chess - by which I mean he'd show me how each piece moved. Meanwhile he immersed himself in the game, read the books, learned some tricks, and then would want me to play with me, using me as his guinea pig. He'd mate me in three or four moves. It didn't take long before I decided chess just wasn't for me. There is only so much humiliation a person can take at the hands of his older brother. 

Since then, I've played occasionally, still badly. Chess is undeniably a fascinating and intellectually challenging game. And the advent of computers has made it safer to play ego-wise. You might get humiliated, but at least a computer doesn't take any glee in making you feel bad. 

It was way back in 1997 the chess master, perhaps the greatest player ever, Garry Kasparov, first lost to a computer. That was way before AI as we know it, and when computer processing power was the equivalent to horse-and-buggy compared to today's super-charged technology.

It's often said that great chess players think many moves ahead, and that's true. But another way to think about it, is that not only are they thinking about their next moves, they are also thinking about their opponent's responses to their next moves. You might say that not only are they moving their pieces around the board, but they are also moving their opponent's pieces. Every move the chessmaster makes is designed to make the opponent move in a predictable way. The better the player, the more they can manipulate their opponent, like a puppeteer pulling strings, forcing the opponent into making them do what they want them to do. At very high levels, chess is not just a game of strategy, it's a game of will power. 

It's perhaps the best analogy of what we can expect from advanced AI, and like playing chess against a grandmaster, most people don't stand a chance. AI has an infinite capacity to learn your game. It will know your game so well, that it will be able to play your game without you even realizing that you're not playing your game, you're being played.    

If you want to get the sense of what that feels like, play a game of chess against a computer. When you are a weak player like me, the point at which you lose control of the game becomes pretty obvious. In my case it's not long after the first few opening moves. Slowly the noose starts to tighten as the game spreads out. Until finally there is only submission. Of course the good players, can stave off that point longer. 

My sense is that in the game we are playing with AI we are still in the opening phase. The board hasn't quite taken shape, we still have agency and options. But not for long.