Comment by suriya-ganesh
6 hours ago
Chess being popular is mostly because FIDE had a massive push in the last decade to make it more audience friendly. shorter time formats, more engaging commentary etc.
While AI in chess is very cool in its own accord. It is not the driver for the adoption.
Google Trends data for "Chess" worldwide show it trending down from 2004-2016, and then leveling off from 2016 until a massive spike in interest in October 2020, when Queen's Gambit was released. Since then it has had a massive upswing.
This seems like an over simplification. Do many newcomers to chess even know about time formats or watch professional matches? From my anecdotal experience that is a hard no.
Chess programs at primary schools have exploded in the last 10 years and at least in my circle millennial parents seem more likely to push their children to intellectual hobbies than previous generations (at least in my case to attempt to prevent my kids from becoming zombies walking around in pajamas like I see the current high schoolers).