Ten years have passed since AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol.
It feels like just yesterday, but that match was the moment a new AI era really started. I have been a big fan of Go for a long time, so I watched the series with great interest. To be honest, at that time, I didn’t think AlphaGo was strong enough to beat a top human professional. But as we all know, AlphaGo won the series 4-1.
Looking back, two moves still stand out in my mind. One is from Game 2, and the other is from Game 4.
Through the series, AlphaGo showed its true strength in the fuseki (the beginning of the game). Until then, I had a strong prejudice that computers were only good at exact, local calculations. I thought “judgment” or “intuition” belonged only to humans. But I was wrong. The computer was far better at the abstract parts of the game than I ever expected.
I still remember Move 37 in Game 2. It was beyond human common sense. On the live stream, Michael Redmond 9-dan looked confused at first. He said it was a surprising move, and another commentator even thought it was a mistake. But it wasn’t. It was a move that changed the history of Go.
Then, there was Game 4. After three losses, Lee Sedol played Move 78. Move 78 was what we call in Japanese “a move that threads the eye of a needle”. Even Demis Hassabis called it a “God’s move.” He must have felt something special—something that his own creation couldn’t see, but a human heart could. I remember seeing the news and the tweets from Demis Hassabis. He said AlphaGo was “confused” and its win percentage dropped suddenly. It was a very emotional moment for all Go fans. It felt like Lee Sedol had found a tiny light in the dark.
It has been 10 years. The world of Go has changed, and so has our world with AI. But when I think back to those moves, I still feel the same excitement and wonder I felt that day. It was the moment we realized that “Science” could create a new kind of “Art.”
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