Imagine If We Didn’t Fear the Machines of Our Own Making
When we pit ourselves against machines, the game can only end in tears. It is in our gift to imagine another way.
By John Cornwell
The game of Go, which has a 3,000-year history in China, is played by two people on a board with counters, or stones, in black and white. The aim is to defeat one’s opponent by surrounding his territory. Metaphorically, the loser is choked into submission by the winner. At a match held in Seoul in South Korea, on 12 March 2016, the world Go champion Lee Sedol, observed by hundreds of supporters, and millions of spectators on television, slumped in apparent despair on being defeated by his opponent: a machine.
Go is a boardgame like no other. It is said to reflect the meaning of life. There are a prodigious number of potential moves — more, it is said, than all the particles in the known Universe. Serious Go players train virtually full-time from the age of five; they think of the game as an art form, and a philosophy, demanding the highest levels of intelligence, intuition and imagination. The champions are revered celebrities. They speak of the game as teaching them ‘an understanding of understanding’, and refer to original winning moves as ‘God’s touch.’
