Elon Musk clashes with Chess.com over AI solving of chess

Elon Musk ignited a social-media feud on Thursday by asserting that chess will be completely solved by artificial intelligence and that few moves are not "utterly stupid." Chess.com reposted his comment, calling it a "skill issue" and pointing out that the total possible chess games outnumber the atoms in the observable universe. Musk countered, clarifying that he was referring to the roughly 10^40 legal chess positions, which are far fewer than the estimated atomic count, and suggested that future superintelligent AI would find ways to solve and compress the game.

The site replied that mapping all possible games would be required, wishing him luck. Musk concluded with a self-deprecating emoji, while Chess.com’s spokesperson joked about losing a Twitter fight to an intern. The exchange also referenced Musk’s earlier AI chess attempts, including xAI’s Grok 4 losing to OpenAI’s o3 model in 2025.