Contrary to fears, AI surpassing human ability has fueled chess's popularity. AI engines are used as personalized coaches in products like Chess.com, analyzing games and helping millions of users learn and improve, making the game more accessible.

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Today's dominant AI tools like ChatGPT are perceived as productivity aids, akin to "homework helpers." The next multi-billion dollar opportunity is in creating the go-to AI for fun, creativity, and entertainment—the app people use when they're not working. This untapped market focuses on user expression and play.

Like chess players who still compete despite AI's dominance, humans will continue practicing skills like writing or design even when AI is better. The fear that AI will make human skill obsolete misses the point. The intrinsic motivation comes from the journey of improvement and the act of creation itself.

The initial experience of using a powerful AI tool is one of immense personal empowerment. This feeling is quickly tempered by the realization that this capability is now universally accessible, effectively devaluing the specialized skill and diluting the individual's competitive advantage.

Increased developer productivity from AI won't lead to fewer jobs. Instead, it mirrors the Jevons paradox seen with electricity: as building software becomes cheaper and faster, the demand for it will dramatically increase. This boosts investment in new projects and ultimately grows the entire software engineering industry.

While many believe AI will primarily help average performers become great, LinkedIn's experience shows the opposite. Their top talent were the first and most effective adopters of new AI tools, using them to become even more productive. This suggests AI may amplify existing talent disparities.

When Good Star Labs streamed their AI Diplomacy game on Twitch, it attracted 50,000 viewers from the gaming community. Watching AIs make mistakes, betray allies, and strategize made the technology more relatable and less intimidating, helping to bridge the gap between AI experts and the general public.

The narrative of AI destroying jobs misses a key point: AI allows companies to 'hire software for a dollar' for tasks that were never economical to assign to humans. This will unlock new services and expand the economy, creating demand in areas that previously didn't exist.

The AI industry is not a winner-take-all market. Instead, it's a dynamic "leapfrogging" race where competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic constantly surpass each other with new models. This prevents a single monopoly and encourages specialization, with different models excelling in areas like coding or current events.

AI reverses the long-standing trend of professional hyper-specialization. By providing instant access to specialist knowledge (e.g., coding in an unfamiliar language), AI tools empower individuals to operate as effective generalists. This allows small, agile teams to achieve more without hiring a dedicated expert for every function.

We perceive complex math as a pinnacle of intelligence, but for AI, it may be an easier problem than tasks we find trivial. Like chess, which computers mastered decades ago, solving major math problems might not signify human-level reasoning but rather that the domain is surprisingly susceptible to computational approaches.

Superhuman AI Didn't Kill Chess; It Became a Growth Engine by Making Players Better | RiffOn