Chess engines didn't replace Magnus Carlsen, and AI won't replace you

[dchftcs]

This is a poor analogy. Magnus Carlsen stays because chess consumers decide to pay for humans even though they are inferior to Stockfish. BigCorp will always pick machine over you if they can.

[manojlds]

Yeah. Coding is not a sport. Even if it is (Leetcode competitions or something), as in chess, it is the top 100 or so that can make money and survive.

[codeclimber]

I agree, that was a weak analogy. Magnus stays employed because chess fans value watching humans compete, not because engines didn't replace his capabilities.

I've updated the post title to "Train with coding assistants like Magnus Carlsen trains with chess engines" to focus on the main point: the methodology. Magnus uses chess engines as sparring-partners to improve his game after matches. Same can be done by developers who will use coding assistants to level up their skills.

Thanks for calling this out.

[kcplate]

Yes, but it’s also a poor analogy in the sense that AI hasn’t replaced one of the best of the best but has easily surpassed the playing capabilities of every fair, average, and above average player out there.

I am not worried about AI replacing the best of the best any time soon, I’m worried about it replacing the fair to middling…relatively soon.

[codeclimber]

Companies automate the parts that are commodity. On messy product work (drifting specs, integration, liability), human + AI + good process > AI alone. The machine proposes; the human sets goals, constrains risk, writes/reads tests. That combo ships faster and with fewer costly mistakes than letting an ai free-run.

[317070]

> BigCorp will always pick machine over you if they can.

But, people might not always prefer BigCorp over humans, if they can?

[jacquesm]

> even though they are inferior to Stockfish

They're not.

[tromp]

> Code review becomes your post-game analysis. Magnus reviews his games with engines to learn from their superior analysis. You review LLM code to ensure it's actually correct.

If AI coding assistents really worked like Chess engines, they would review your code, pointing out issues and suggesting improvements.

[codeclimber]

Yes, chess engines review your games and point out blunders. They also suggest moves you'd never consider. Like when you're analyzing a position and the engine recommends a move that flips the eval from -1.5 to +1.8. Similarly, coding assistants might suggest a solution you'd never considered.

Both teach something new.

[CaptainOfCoit]

I guess the purpose is difference? You play chess because you want to play chess, as a fun thing (and also sometimes more serious thing), but a lot of us write code for something else, the purpose is not the code itself, but what it accomplishes, the code just happens to be a tool, so it's not necessarily the activity you want to do, it just unlocks/improves some other activity.

I think it'd be fairly easy to create a project that uses an LLM to effectively review your code, if that what's you want. But personally I'd rather do the opposite, describe what sort of code I'm looking for, how it's supposed to work, and what the goal is, and then not having to do the actual typing itself.

[xandrius]

That's definitely possible, just not perfect but they can catch/point out some bugs.

[JoeAltmaier]

We're not all Magnus Carlsen. Some of us are hacks or very ordinary 'players', and can be replace without a ripple on the pond.

[ourmandave]

I'd be happy just being Hikaru, whose busy seal clubbing his way to the spot on the Candidates.

[v3am]

Fair point but Magnus wasn't born Magnus. He became world champion partly by doing what the article describes: using engines for post-game analysis. A 1200-rated chess player who reviews their games with an engine improves faster than one who doesn't.

[itsnowandnever]

everyone is the Magnus Carlsen of their own life, though. and humans are irreplaceable. sure, budget decisions are made that cause people to have to go find another employer. but there is no civilization without people in it.

[bzalasky]

One thing that might not be apparent to non-chess players is that an experienced human (particularly a GM or Super-GM) with an engine can often beat the same engine or another engine that lacks human assistance. There are some positions, particularly in closed games where this can become more of a factor. It'll be interesting to see if a similar logic plays out in other fields. I imagine that some companies may be quick to automate away roles to save money, however, if you follow what we've learned about chess, there's likely an opportunity to make a bet (start a company) on AI-assistance outperforming full AI automation in some domains.

[jobigoud]

We obviously wish for this to be true so we must be careful with our own bias. It's not clear at all that "centaur" teams are better at chess than computer alone, are there actual tournaments where this is tested?

I remember this was a topic in early 2010's and then it was said that the human team member was already not contributing much anymore. In a blitz game it would most likely be detrimental.

[neaden]

Centaur Chess (the term for this) used to be better but outside of some positions that I don't think have ever occurred in an actual game, no human can help out a modern chess engine.

[medvezhenok]

I think this was true before AlphaZero; now, I'm not sure there's any benefit to having a human + engine versus just an engine alone.

From my understanding the AlphaZero based engines (i.e. neural nets) do not really benefit from having a human in the loop.

[measurablefunc]

Chess is a closed system w/ finitely many rules. I don't think success in closed domains transfers to open ones & this is the usual error optimists are making about AI & its success in closed domains like chess. Continuous learning is necessary for open domains b/c real world distributions are constantly changing & unless deployed systems can keep up w/ the changes their performance will continuously degrade until they're worse than random. Chess has been the same for millenia & that's why chess is essentially solved.

[codeclimber]

This is advanced/cyborg chess in a nutshell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess)

[constantcrying]

Magnus Carlsen is a performer.

If people wanted to see "perfect" chess they would be watching chess engine championships. These feature some of the deepest and most thought out moves ever performed in chess. They also get a few hundred live viewers.

Magnus is objectively an inferior player to top chess engines. If there was a technological problem that requires the best chess abilities, nobody would be paying Magnus to solve that problem, they would be using a chess engine.

The analogy does not work at all, because Magnus is not paid to be a good chess player in absolute terms, but a good chess player relative to other human top chess players.

[jacquesm]

> Magnus Carlsen is a performer.

Not everything that draws a crowd is a performance. I suspect Magnus Carlsen would play chess even if nobody watched. Just look at Mikhail Tal, Max Euwe, Garry Kasparov and all those others. None of them did it because of the crowds. They did it because the game itself fascinated them.

[jp57]

AI won't replace you ... if you are the Magnus Carlsen of your field.

How you will get experience to grow into the Magnus Carlsen of your field is an open question, however.

[kgthegreat]

Nobody is paying money to watch you code

[EA-3167]

I agree with the conclusion but the premise is bunk. AI won’t replace you because it’s unsustainable and grossly overhyped, not because it’s as effective at general tasks or code review to the same extent that computers can play chess.

[hooverd]

And to what end? I sometimes get the impression software people want to optimize out everything so in the end, when there's nothing left to do, they can lay down and die.

[stackghost]

It wasn't that long ago that if you worked at an engineering firm, you needed a whole floor or floors of skilled draftsmen to produce the engineering drawings of your bridge, or your widget. Now an intern can do that in seconds with modern CAD software.

The same phenomenon is already occurring with AI. The concern is not that it will replace people, it's that it will make people so productive that it will create an oversupply of workers and thus kill a lot of jobs.

[haunter]

Mildly OT: but which one is the best (offline) frontend for Stockfish? Or just what do HN people use? There are so many options [0] from free to paid I wish there was a big comparison table somewhere

https://official-stockfish.github.io/docs/stockfish-wiki/Dow...

[cluckindan]

https://github.com/mbiesiad/awesome-chess

[dpark]

This is like saying automated delivery drones haven’t replaced Saquon Barkley, so they won’t replace you (delivery driver).

Imagine if you will that chess engines don’t exist but apps do. A chess game company might employ a small army of excellent chess players to play games against their customers. You load up your app, request a medium difficulty game, and get connected with James, who’s playing 10 games at once for $20/hour. It’s a decent gig. Customers pay a fee for the experience but it’s worth it to them.

But now let’s say Google publishes a groundbreaking paper that lays out the foundation of an automated chess engine. Should James be worried about his job? Carlsen’s going to be fine. I’m not so sure about James.

[mrs6969]

Even though cars are faster, there are still human runners.

[lostmsu]

To add to your point, chess is relatively irrelevant vs other games. And there's a chance it is precisely because it is too simple. After all, human chess players have been beaten two decades ago. Dota 2 game and players were not (as of last try by OpenAI) - certain mechanics had to be removed to compete with the top players.

[holyknight]

While I agree that AI wont replace you, the analogy is BS. Magnus Carlsen is not replaced by a chess engine because he is not paid solely because of his raw skills. As any professional player of any massive sport, he is an entertainer first. He gets paid only because people want to watch him play.

[arisAlexis]

Crazy cope lately , understandable human emotions though

[AndrewOMartin]

My go to phrase for the equivalent observation is "If they ever make a machine that can make a coffee at the press of a button then all the coffee shops will have to close" /s.