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Using AI in go matches could be compared with mechanical doping in bicycle racing. Femke Van den Driessche was banned for 6 years.
The parallel is a good one.
But there was rather more to it than "6 years", I believe. She had her previous results annulled (in go that would presumably mean having promotions voided), but more importantly the sponsors said they would sue her. As a result she retired voluntarily, and so what many people would claim was the right outcome was achieved anyway. I don't know how the law suit panned out, but in cycling you mostly represent either yourself or a team, and it would be only you as an individual or the team who could expect to be sued. In go you represent a guild - all other go players in your country. The whole guild could therefore be sued, or at the very least the sponsor would withdraw entirely.
So self-preservation for the guild could demand a very stiff and public punishment. I would imagine that was considered, and age might have been a factor, but it is likely in my view that they also hesitated over fears of a messy and drawn-out law suit by the player.
One thing we see in professional sport in the west, and this cycling instance is a good example, is that cheaters rarely show remorse. Like van den Driessche they claim they didn't get a fair trial, or had bad advice, or had a bad hair day. The only regret they show is at getting caught.
The reason the parallel is good is that in very many sports cheating can be opportunistic. A trip in football, shifting a ball or a leaf in golf, grunting in tennis, showing spikes as you steal a base in baseball, and so on. Even though horrific injuries can result at times, penalties tend not to be draconian because people recognise irregular things can happen in the heat of the moment.
But with mechanical doping, as with the use of AI in go, there is no spontaneity about it. It is planned meticulously and away from the pressure of the moment. And if it succeeds, it can go on and on and on for years. Viz. Lance Armstrong.
The other problem with this kind of sustainable cheating is that opponents who suspect something is afoot, but can't prove it, decide to join the cheaters. Just as athletics is now a contest between pharmacists, professional go will become a contest between programmers.
I notice that very many of the comments here on the scale of punishments are nearly all about the perpetrator's age or the perpetrator's teacher or the fan's pressure on the perpetrator, and no doubt in due course we'll hear sob stories about the perpetrator's home life or school life. But there has been barely a peep about the hundreds of victims (thousands if we take a long tern view in the case of a mild sanction).
The best way forward may be for these victims - the fellow professionals - to decide, though their guilds, what action to take against their own fellow member. This wouldn't work in cycling or other international sports because national pride would get in the way too easily. But it not only can happen in go, it already has for past misdemeanours, in both Korea and Japan. China operates differently because of government involvement and so no guild structure, but cheating has happened there, too, and was likewise dealt with robustly. On occasions the verdicts in each of these countries can seem like whitewash, but we don't get to see the undertow that does relentlessly operate over time.
Of course, maybe the undertow is being relied on here, too.