I suspect I'm in the same camp as Kirby. From everything he's said over a long period, even before AI hit the scene, something has demotivated him slightly, and it sounds like what afflicts most of us: the responsibilities of real life - family, job, the future in general... The same afflictions no doubt explain why more people don't take up go passionately. At any rate, I think the decline or stagnation in western amateur go interest has absolutely nothing to do with lack of advertising or publicity, and in the few places where amateur go does thrive it is almost entirely because of the efforts of a few energetic or charismatic individuals. Once these individuals disappear, stagnation and decline re-assert themselves.
Some of us find a reason even so to continue with the game. I know, for example, that a big chunk of people used to find the social aspects attractive via clubs and tournaments. In England it was possible to play in a reachable tournament almost every weekend, and in London you could attend a club most nights of the week. But even in America, where distances make tournaments few and far between, their very rarity made them a high point of go life.
But both clubs and tournaments have been clobbered by the internet, long before AI. It's not just that it disinclined many people physically to go to an event, but the instant and rapid spread of anonymity, foul language and cheating was the very antithesis of social go. The craving for rip-offs (plus the same bad behaviour on the servers being directed at publishers) has killed off go books and magazines. The magazines in particular used to have an important social function, as did the book stall at tournaments.
There are, on the other hand, quite a lot of players who may not be passionate about the social aspects but who value tournaments as a way of testing themselves. While there are a few idiots who keep popping up to tell us they are going to study go obsessively for a year to see whether they can become pro, the vast majority of people who want to improve just want to measure themselves against their own personal yardstick. People like that, in the recent past, found that books and live interaction with other players were invaluable in providing opportunities and motivation for improvement. Maybe it's a generational thing that will disappear with time, but the internet does not seem to have provided satisfactory replacements for such people.
In my own case, both as a chess player and a go player, I was never the slightest bit interested in becoming a pro, or even in playing in tournaments, though I used to do some of that. I was always more fascinated by the cultural and historical aspects, but even deeper than that I was mostly fascinated by how top players thought, what made them strong. Why were Emanuel Lasker or Capablance stronger than their contemporaries - was it genes, background, politics, luck? Was Dosaku a freak who could compete well even today, but even in his own time how could he be so much stronger than the rest? Do modern Mickey Mouse games damage go? I have no complete answers to these questions but have enjoyed trying to find out. One reason I stopped going to tournaments, incidentally, was I got bored with the interminable post-game discussions along the lines of: "if he played there I would have played there", or "this is not joseki, that is." I wanted to hear people step away from tactics and delve into the realms of creative ideas, by saying "I played this because..." The only player I ever heard do that in British events was Matthew Macfadyen (and the fact he was/is our strongest player may not be unconnected with that; ubderdude seems to be in he same mould but I haven't met him yet).
So what I am saying is that the pressures of real life and the real reasons people play amateur go generally leave them inclined to have some negative feelings about how long or how intensively they will stay in the game. When something like AplhaGo comes along, it just adds to the existing malaise.
It doesn't cause the malaise, but how much it affects an individual can vary substantially. In my own case it has two effects. I am certainly not opposed to computer go (I worked for quite some time on the first computer shogi machines with David Levy), but I do feel demotivated by the way computers have undercut the traditional way of talking about the games. What I mean is that, in chess, where once a top player could say "I played this combination, even though it is probably unsound, because...", nowadays some kid can come along between nappy changes and say, "Stockfish shows there's a forced mate in 45 moves." The top player tells me something valuable about how a human thinks, but the kiddie tells me nothing but trivia. We are getting the same situation with winrates in go. But there's a more insidious problem, long apparent in chess. There, writers no longer give their true thoughts on a game. Out of fear, they check everything on a computer first, and that in turn changes what they write. So we no longer really hear what a human thought, but what a human pretends he thought. It is even worse in chess because three-quarters of the game being commented on may have already been played by the computer even before the first move, as part of opening preparation.
People often say that chess is thriving "despite" or "because of" computers. I'm not sure that either case is true. For me, as a fan rather than as a player, the activities of the top players are the main interest (so long as they share their thoughts). I have already adumbrated reasons why I have fewer reasons to believe they are really sharing their own thoughts nowadays, but top players outside the top ten in general are having a tough time in chess. I was struck by the fact that Britain's current top player, Mickey Adams, has played just 3 events in the first half of this year. That's a similar pattern for all the other top players I looked at. They can look much busier if you count their games, because top chess events are typically round-robins. But in terms of prize-winning opportunities, Adams seems to have had just three this year. And he's a top player who can expect some of the invitations (for usually not very substantial prizes) the chess world depends on. That can't be good for chess, surely? I can't see how chess computers are going to change that - except for cheaters, of course.
For amateurs, I haven't seen anything from the chess world that suggests computers have taught us anything. They have provided many more opportunities to play and practise, online or offline, so to that extent they have helped people improve, but they haven't taught them anything. Go and chess have different balances of tactics and strategy, so maybe it will be different in go? So far I have seen nothing to suggest AI can teach us anything in go either, beyond perhaps raising a few questions that we can ponder on - but even there different versions of the same machine seem to contradict each other most of the time. Furthermore, all the academic opinion I've read seems to conclude that such teaching is either a long way off, or a chimera because AI works on entirely different principles from humans.
With so much potential negativity about AI and computers, I infer from some comments that some L19 readers even find the AI threads annoying. I for one do find the "look at my shiny new toy" comments tiresome, but I enjoy the sage comments from people like uberdude and Bill Spight: they both add spice to my "how humans think" interest. Nevertheless, that enjoyment doesn't alter my generally pessimistic view of AI in go for me. Others no doubt will find positives and will continue to follow the game, but I suspect what they will be enjoying is not go as I know it, but some new hybrid (as has happened in chess). Which means we have to think in terms of apples and oranges now when talking about go.
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