Me and Chatty-G

For decades, the story of artificial intelligence has followed a simple script: computers get better at thinking by getting better at calculating. First they mastered arithmetic. Then they beat chess champions. Later, they conquered Go — a game once thought to require uniquely human intuition. Each victory seemed to confirm the same lesson: intelligence is optimization, and machines are steadily outperforming us at it. But an unlikely counterexample has been sitting in hobby shops and college dorms for years. Magic: The Gathering , a fantasy trading card game, turns out to illuminate something important about where human intelligence still shines — and why the future of AI may look less like chess and more like navigating uncertainty. Unlike chess or Go, Magic resists clean solutions. Players build decks from thousands of possible cards, each introducing new rules and interactions. Information is hidden. Luck plays a role. The game constantly evolves as new cards are released. Even def...