Can Chess Teach Us How to Cope with AI?

Thoughts from my latest obsession, and a new book!

Welcome new and old readers, friends, and family! It’s been a hectic year so far, but the rest of my summer is looking pretty calm and I’m hoping to write to you a few times before I get busy again.

I’ve been playing chess a lot lately. I never played chess as a kid, but I’ve made several attempts to get beyond being a beginner-level player as an adult. This latest attempt started around six months ago, and I’ve been playing daily on chess.com. I still lose at least half the games I play, but I’m making slow progress. It occurred to me the other day that maybe I can apply some lessons from all this chess playing to my ongoing existential crisis over what it means to be a writer today.

Chess was “solved” by AI in 1997 when IBM’s Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov. In the years since then, chess computers have only gotten better. Today, chess engines play in a different league than people and the only way any human player can beat a computer player is if the computer is dumbed down.

Knowing that we can never again beat a computer at chess hasn’t stopped people from playing chess. Instead, just the opposite is happening — chess is experiencing a huge wave of popularity worldwide and chess computers are great tools for learning and improving your game.

Can the way the chess world has dealt with being bested teach us something about how to cope with computers becoming better at other things we think of as uniquely human (like writing or coding)? I don’t know the answer, but I’d love to hear your thoughts!

New Book

My latest book, Artificial Intelligence All-In-One for Dummies is out now in paperback, ebook, and audiobook! This one is not entirely by me. It has my name on the cover, but that’s because I’m the person who compiled it from 7 other books (including two of my own). My job was to create an outline, write the introduction, pick the chapters from the source books, and figure out how to make it all work together. The end result is an 800 page book that covers everything a beginner-to-intermediate user might need to know about using the latest generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot) for a wide variety of tasks.

I have a few review copies. Email me if you’re interested in getting free copy to read and review!

Favorite Quote of the Week

I saw this today and it sums up my current feelings on the things I’m writing and teaching about these days:

Artificial intelligence is a “development that will certainly be of great help to society, provided that its employment does not undermine the identity and dignity of the human person and his or her fundamental freedoms. In particular, it must not be forgotten that artificial intelligence functions as a tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them, not to replace them. What is emerging is in fact a significant challenge, one that calls for great attention and foresight in order to project, also in the context of new scenarios, healthy, fair and sound lifestyles…” - Pope Leo XIV, June 21 2025

Thanks for reading,

-Chris