ArticleBritish journal of psychology (London, England : 1953)2026
Computers and chess masters: The role of AI in transforming elite human performance.
Article in British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparability between AI and human cognition and its role in psychological research and AI ethics.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Review
- Intuition and deliberation in elite expertise.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Opening strategies in the game of go from feudalism to superhuman AI.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have made significant strides in recent years, often supplementing rather than replacing human performance. The extent of their assistance at the highest levels of human performance remains unclear. We analyse over 11.6 million decisions of elite chess players, a domain commonly used as a testbed for AI and psychology due to its complexity and objective assessment. We investigated the impact of two AI chess revolutions: the first in the late 1990s with the rise of powerful PCs and internet access and the second in the late 2010s with deep learning-powered chess engines. The rate of human improvement mirrored AI advancements, but contrary to expectations, the quality of decisions mostly improved steadily over four decades, irrespective of age, with no distinct periods of rapid improvement. Only the youngest top players saw marked gains in the late 1990s, likely due to better access to knowledge and computers. Surprisingly, the recent wave of neural network-powered engines has not significantly impacted the best players - at least, not yet. Our research highlights AI's potential to enhance human capability in complex tasks, given the right conditions, even among the most elite performers.
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