Posted on 06/14/2025 2:51:55 PM PDT by sopo
OpenAI's ChatGPT has some major AI chatbot competitors in the market: Gemini, Copilot, Claude. Now add to that list the Atari 2600. The OG video game console, which was first released in 1977, was used in an engineer's experiment to see how it would fare playing chess against the AI chatbot.
By using a software emulator to run Atari's 1979 game Video Chess, Citrix engineer Robert Caruso said he was able to set up a match between ChatGPT and the 46-year-old game. The matchup did not go well for ChatGPT.
"ChatGPT confused rooks for bishops, missed pawn forks and repeatedly lost track of where pieces were -- first blaming the Atari icons as too abstract, then faring no better even after switching to standard chess notations," Caruso wrote in a LinkedIn post.
AI Atlas "It made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd-grade chess club," Caruso said. "ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked at the beginner level."
Caruso wrote that the 90-minute match continued badly and that the AI chatbot repeatedly requested that the match start over.
For decades, the ability for computers to defeat humans at chess has been a measure of their power. In 1997, IBM made headlines when its Deep Blue technology defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a series of matches.
Caruso's experiment doesn't mean ChatGPT is useless for chess, but because it's more of a language model than a supercomputer, it's less likely to serve that purpose well. A few years ago, a developer created a ChatGPT plugin called ChessGPT. But it may be better to discuss chess with OpenAI's chatbot than to try to play against it.
A representative for OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
LOOOOOOL
Did they try a Pong match?
Hilarious!!!!
Well it sure beats “Global Thermonuclear War”.
Challenge the computer to Chess-Boxing?
I’ve used ChatGpt to write VBA code for Excel. It’s fast, but never gets anything right the first time. Some things it never gets right
AI is like all software programs, crap in crap out.
It only know what you feed it, you feed it only crap and it only knows crap.
Now have ChatGPT go up against
E.T. the Extraterrestrial 👽 game
The engineer could have been a little biased, considering the disclaimer at the bottom. But it does sound consistent with AI getting lost going around detours despite extensive knowledge of road networks.
Or Yar’s Revenge
“Now have ChatGPT go up against
E.T. the Extraterrestrial 👽 game”
Sounds like a Kirk maneuver...
Nonsense article! Does not specify the chess engine running on the Atari!
The best engine from the 1990’s was Fritz. I believe it came out of Germany.
I was a high school chess coach in the late 1990’s. Using email, I pointed out to the Fritz developers that their engine could be improved by changing the numerical assessment of the current position. Formerly, if the next move was forced, then Fritz would report a nonsense number. I wanted to use Fritz to input games after my players were finished. But the nonsense numbers ruined the overall game assessment.
The Fritz developers agreed with me, fixed it, and then provided me with a free update.
😀😃😄😅🤣🤪
Yar’s Revenge. Wow, that just brought back memories! How about Demon Attack? Amazing graphics for a 2600 game.
Good experience as chess coach? (I mean worthwhile?)
I regularly beat computer chess. Computation power can’t match human intuition.
The only winning move is not to play. On the other hand, in a game of Global Thermonuclear War against ChatGPT, the only winning move may be to play it right now.
Actually the 2600 chess game was pretty good. It even had a difficulty setting. At the highest it would take forever between moves but it was very hard to beat it. Considering the available tech it is amazing how good it was
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