When Algorithms Won An Ancient Human Game And Became “AI”
A truly original move, a word adopted into our vocabulary, and another way of thinking about ourselves
“I am confident about the match. I believe human intuition is too advanced for AI to have caught up. I’m going to do my best to protect human intelligence.”
— Lee Sodol, Go Grandmaster (9th Dan) prior to match with AlphaGo, AlphaGo (Documentary)
It’s hard to know when a new idea truly engrains itself into a society, let alone to know the exact starting point or person. Famed music producer Rick Rubin believes ideas are given to us from an external source (the universe.)
In his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, he says those with “sensitive antennae” can feel it and pull it out of the ether. If one doesn’t catch it, the idea will wait until its signal is picked up by a receiver sensitive enough.
That’s why ideas can seemingly appear many places at once. It’s a bit hokey and cosmic, but he may have a point. For instance, the ancient two-player game “Go,” according to some, is four thousand years old, while others date it at about half that age.
The Go aficionado John Fairbairn notes the game (“Weiqi” in Pinyin Chinese) was mentioned in the Analects…
