Magnus, Machines, and the Future of GTM: AI Ultimately Prevails in Open Systems, but Humans Still Matter...A Lot

Magnus Carlsen beat ChatGPT in chess. Here's what that means.

Magnus Carlsen beat ChatGPT in chess.

That simple sentence feels almost quaint—like a human holding onto a last redoubt of superiority in an age of intelligent machines.

But the meaning beneath the moment runs far deeper than a single match. It’s not just a feel-good win for humanity. It’s a lesson in how intelligence—both artificial and human—functions across different types of systems. More specifically, it offers a powerful analogy for the future of go-to-market in a world increasingly run by autonomous agents.

Chess is a closed system. Go-to-market, like Business in general, is an open system.

That one difference changes everything.

In a closed system like chess, the rules are fully known, the state of play is visible to all, and the universe of possible moves is vast but finite. A supercomputer can, in theory, calculate every possible path. This is precisely the type of environment where AI has traditionally excelled. It can simulate millions of moves, optimize for statistical advantage, and execute with ruthless efficiency.