Google DeepMind’s partnership with Boston Dynamics represents a pivotal moment in embodied AI development, combining advanced AI models with capable robotic hardware. This essay explores both the genuine potential benefits—elder care, dangerous work, accessibility—and the serious risks of concentrated ownership over physical AI systems. The critical question isn’t whether this technology will exist, but whether its benefits will be distributed broadly or captured by the few companies building it.

This essay examines what chess’s survival and flourishing despite superhuman engines reveals about humanity’s potential relationship with AI. It explores why human chess retained meaning, what choices enabled coexistence, and the harder questions that emerge when we extend this analogy beyond games to work, governance, and society.