The head of Google’s DeepMind says artificial intelligence could usher in an era of ‘incredible productivity’ and ‘radical abundance’. But who will it benefit? And why does he wish the tech giants had moved more slowly?

Recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology use has been rising in sports. For example, to reduce staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, major tennis tournaments replaced human line judges with Hawk-Eye Live technology. AI is now ready to move beyond such mundane tasks, however. A case in point and a perfect application ground is chess. To reduce the growing incidence of draws, many elite tournaments have resorted to fast chess tiebreakers. However, these tiebreakers are vulnerable to strategic manipulation, e.g., in the last game of the 2018 World Chess Championship, Magnus Carlsen -- in a significantly advantageous position -- offered a draw to Fabiano Caruana (whom accepted the offer) to proceed to fast chess tiebreaks in which Carlsen had even better odds of winning the championship. By contrast, we prove that our AI-based method can serve as a judge to break ties without being vulnerable to such manipulation. It relies on measuring the difference between the evaluations of a player's actual move and the best move as deemed by a powerful chess engine. If there is a tie, the player with the higher quality measure wins the tiebreak. We generalize our method to all competitive sports and games in which AI's superiority is -- or can be -- established.

My 4-year-old daughter and I were deep into a game of checkers one day about three years ago when her eye drifted to a nearby table. There, a black and white board bristled with far more interesting figures, like horses and castles. There was just one problem: I didn't know how. I dimly remembered having learned the basic moves in elementary school, but it never stuck. This fact vaguely haunted me through my life; idle chessboards in hotel lobbies or puzzles in weekend newspaper supplements teased me like reproachful riddles. And so I decided I would learn, if only so I could teach my daughter. The basic moves were easy enough to pick up--a few hours hunched over my smartphone at kids' birthday parties or waiting in line at the grocery store.

Since 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue beat world champion and chess legend Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, chess players have accepted that machines are stronger at chess. We have taken some comfort from the fact that we taught these machines how to play. But strangely enough, despite being programmed by humans, traditional chess engines don't play quite like humans. Despite the hand-crafted heuristics, the fundament of an engine's superiority lies in calculation: sifting through vast numbers of moves to find concrete ways to solve a position. Back then, chess grandmasters were hired in to evaluate a series of typical positions and describe the considerations that led to the assessment, and then programmers turned these considerations into ever more sophisticated heuristics.

It wasn't easy and it wasn't especially pretty, but world chess champion Magnus Carlsen has successfully defended his crown in what was scheduled to be a 12-game match against world No. 2 Fabiano Caruana. After all 12 of those games were drawn, the victor was decided via a best-of-four series of "rapid chess" contests, in which each player has about 30 minutes to complete all his moves. The Norwegian Carlsen, by far the world's No. 1 player at rapid chess, predictably dominated Caruana, who entered the match ranked only No. 8 in the format, winning the playoff games 3-0 and retaining his title for another two years. What kind of match was it? A bit dull, to be honest, at least until Wednesday's rapid games. Top-level chess isn't the romantic game it once was, and it's becoming less and less romantic every year.

Max was not very good at chess himself. He's a 24-year-old entrepreneur who lives in San Francisco and plays the sport occasionally to amuse himself. He was a prototypical amateur. Now he was preparing himself for a match against chess royalty. And he believed he could win. The unlikely series of events that brought him to this stage began last year, when Max challenged himself to a series of monthly tasks that were ambitious bordering on absurd. He memorized the order of a shuffled deck of cards. He solved a Rubik's Cube in 17 seconds. He developed perfect musical pitch and landed a standing back-flip. He studied enough Hebrew to discuss the future of technology for a half-hour. Max, a self-diagnosed obsessive learner, wanted his goals to be so lofty that he would fail to reach some. He knew from the beginning of his peculiar year that the hardest challenge would come in October: defeating Magnus Carlsen in a game of chess.

The World Chess Championship is nearing its close, with the final tie-breaking match between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin set for Monday. The match, a series of 12 games that began on November 11th, has attracted celebrities, tech leaders, and high-profile media coverage. In part, that's thanks to its New York location, where chess has enjoyed a decade-long surge in popularity. The continuing popularity of chess might have been hard to predict in 1997, after IBM's Deep Blue defeated human World Champion Gary Kasparov (also in New York). Before the match, commentators thought a loss by Kasparov would diminish chess as a pursuit.

World chess champion Magnes Carlsen (right) won't play his computer or play the game like a computer. Instead, he chooses his strategy based on what he knows about his opponent. World chess champion Magnes Carlsen (right) won't play his computer or play the game like a computer. Instead, he chooses his strategy based on what he knows about his opponent. Next month, there's a world chess championship match in New York City, and the two competitors, the assembled grandmasters, the budding chess prodigies, the older chess fans -- everyone paying attention -- will know this indisputable fact: A computer could win the match hands down. They've known as much for almost 20 years -- ever since May 11, 1997.

Next month, there's a world chess championship match in New York City, and the two competitors, the assembled grandmasters, the budding chess prodigies, the older chess fans -- everyone paying attention -- will know this indisputable fact: A computer could win the match hands down. They've known as much for almost 20 years -- ever since May 11, 1997. On that day, IBM's Deep Blue defeated the great Garry Kasparov who, after an early blunder, resigned in defeat. "I am ashamed by what I did at the end of this match. But so be it," Kasparov said.

World chess champion Magnes Carlsen (right) won't play his computer or play the game like a computer. Instead, he chooses his strategy based on what he knows about his opponent. World chess champion Magnes Carlsen (right) won't play his computer or play the game like a computer. Instead, he chooses his strategy based on what he knows about his opponent. Next month, there's a world chess championship match in New York City, and the two competitors, the assembled grandmasters, the budding chess prodigies, the older chess fans -- everyone paying attention -- will know this indisputable fact: A computer could win the match hands down. They've known as much for almost 20 years -- ever since May 11, 1997.