{"id":2599,"date":"2025-06-10T20:04:54","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/atari-beats-chatgpt-chess\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:04:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:04:54","slug":"atari-beats-chatgpt-chess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/atari-beats-chatgpt-chess\/","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT &#8220;Absolutely Wrecked&#8221; at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"378\" src=\"https:\/\/wordpress-assets.futurism.com\/2025\/06\/atari-beats-chatgpt-chess.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full wp-post-image\" alt=\"Despite all its advances, ChatGPT still, seemingly, is less smart than an Atari simulator on beginner mode.\" style=\"margin-bottom: 15px;\" decoding=\"async\"><\/div>\n<p>Despite all <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/openai-model-sabotage-shutdown-code\">its advances<\/a>, ChatGPT is seemingly still less smart \u2014 at certain tasks, at least \u2014 than an Atari game console from almost 50 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/robert-jr-caruso-23080180_ai-chess-atari2600-activity-7337108175185145856-HSP0\/\">post on LinkedIn<\/a>, Citrix software engineer Robert Caruso explained how the OpenAI chatbot &#8220;got absolutely wrecked&#8221; by an Atari 2600 running Atari Chess, a game for the system released in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was still president.<\/p>\n<p>Launched in 1977, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.museumofplay.org\/toys\/atari-2600-game-system\/\">Atari 2600<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 also marketed at the time as the Atari Video Computer System \u2014 popularized at-home gaming after Atari released its &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/computerhistory.org\/blog\/50-years-of-fun-with-pong\/\">Pong<\/a>&#8221; console two years prior. Still, that system was released some 21 years after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.computerhistory.org\/chess\/stl-431614f64c5ba\/\">MANIAC I supercomputer<\/a> became the first machine in history to defeat a human at modified chess, so you&#8217;d think that after another few decades, our cutting-edge tech would destroy the primordial Atari.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, that wasn&#8217;t the case.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level,&#8221; Caruso wrote. &#8220;This was after a conversation we had regarding the history of AI in Chess which led to it volunteering to play Atari Chess. It wanted to find out how quickly it could beat a game that only thinks 1-2 moves ahead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Although the chatbot had been given a &#8220;baseline board&#8221; to learn the game and identify pieces, it kept mixing up rooks and bishops, misread moves, and &#8220;repeatedly lost track&#8221; of where its pieces were. To make matters worse, as Caruso explained, ChatGPT also blamed Atari&#8217;s icons for being &#8220;too abstract to recognize&#8221; \u2014 but when he switched the game over to standard notation, it didn&#8217;t perform any better.<\/p>\n<p>For an hour-and-a-half, ChatGPT &#8220;made enough blunders to get laughed out of a 3rd grade chess club&#8221; while insisting over and over again that it would win &#8220;if we just started over,&#8221; Caruso noted. (And yes, it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/chatgpt-mental-health-crises\">kind of creepy<\/a> that the chatbot apparently referred to itself and the human it was interfacing with as &#8220;we.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Meanwhile, Atari\u2019s humble 8-bit engine just did its thing,&#8221; the engineer noted. &#8220;No language model. No flash. Just brute-force board evaluation and 1977 stubbornness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, we don&#8217;t have any video of Caruso&#8217;s gameplay setup to watch ChatGPT get destroyed by a nearly 50-year-old AI \u2014 but at least we get to laugh at the idea of the chatbot&#8217;s lack of gaming prowess.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More on moronic chatbots:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth\"><em>Therapy Chatbot Tells Recovering Addict to Have a Little Meth as a Treat<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/atari-beats-chatgpt-chess\">ChatGPT &#8220;Absolutely Wrecked&#8221; at Chess by Atari 2600 Console From 1977<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/\">Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite all its advances, ChatGPT is seemingly still less smart \u2014 at certain tasks, at least \u2014 than an Atari game console from almost 50 years ago. In a post&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,1540,196,1541,303],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-atari","category-chatgpt","category-chess","category-gaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}