'Even my friends don’t text me back that fast' - Musk and Chess.com's argument on X is one of the best

Elon Musk got into an argument with Chess.com on his social media platform over the number of legal moves in a game of chess. The billionaire claimed that artificial superintelligence will one day fully solve the game. It started when Musk replied to a user's post on the total number of possible games in the game, stating, "By the time you get to move #40, the total number of possible games explodes to roughly 10⁴⁰, a number comparable to the total number of atoms in the observable universe."

To this, Musk replied, "The actual number of moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny, and chess will be fully solved one day." Chess.com jumped into the conversation at this point by posting a simple, "skill issue."

Musk was by now fully into it, and replied, "Chess is hard for humans, but not for computers. One day, it will be fully solved like checkers." He added that till then, "have fun", stating that “people enjoy many games/sports where machines are vastly better.”

Chess.com's X handle claimed that there are so many possible chess games that ASI would never be able to fully comprehend all of them. Whoever was handling the page wrote, "There are more possible chess games, by about 40 orders of magnitude, than atoms in the observable universe. To solve chess, you'd have to map them all. Good luck."

Musk replied with information on all "legal chess positions," writing, “Wrong, all legal chess positions are ~40 oom less than the estimated atoms in the Universe. And ASI will figure out ways to solve and compress that are far beyond what we could possibly comprehend.”

When Musk and Chess.com page's argument got interesting

What made the entire argument a "let me grab my popcorn" moment was the turn it took from hereon. "(Here I am arguing with some random intern at a chess website)", Musk wrote.

The person handling the Chess.com page told him, "I’m a full-time employee," to which Musk replied by posting an emoji with an unbothered reaction. Chess.com took a jibe at Musk for his quick responses and wrote, "even my friends don’t text me back that fast."

Netizens continued posting reactions to the hilarious conversation. Some of them pointed out how the number of "valid moves" is different from the number of "possible chess games." A user wrote, "Chess games and Chess positions are two different things Elon. Chess games are ~10^120 - there are ~10^80 atoms in the observable universe. There are however "only" ~10^44 legal posiitons."