We haven't identified here what we're afraid of, inherently. I believe the issue at hand is the end of human contribution.
At the amateur level, it matters little what one is doing to pump their ranking or cheat. If money isn't involved, if the level isn't extremely high, the art remains unfazed.
At the professional level, there are two main reasons why money is exchanged for performance. The player provides entertainment first, then progress in their field. As our 'athletes' strive to go one step further than the competition, they end up adding to the theory of the game as a whole. The art progresses.
The problem with Chess AI beating top players is that we feel that the progress of the art is no longer up to us as creative, intelligent individuals. Find a good move in a position and the computer will (most often) match or exceed it. It scares us that computers can contribute to a field which was (is?) believed to require wholly human qualities. Creativity, adaptability, strategy.
The professional Chess scene marches on because the people have spoken. It still retains its entertainment value despite the drastic changes that Chess-playing AI have brought.
Go, as we understand it, is much more complex than Chess. We humans have learned to cope with heuristics, selective reading and theory. Up to four thousand years of trial-and-error. Go retains its nigh-mystical image of a game for which many different qualities, most very human, are necessary for high-level play. How would you play like a top pro without fighting spirit, patience, imagination and a sense of balance, among other things?
Well as it turns out, Go-playing AI are catching up wayyyyy fast.
Does this mean that these so-human qualities which distinguish us from animals, trees, bacteria, rock, air, are nothing more than heuristics of their own? Can they be explained in a simple, surgical manner as science links up one neuron to another, while computer programs learn to emulate and excel at being human?
Scary thoughts. In ten years, Go programs could point out dozens of flawed moves in each of Iyama Yuta's games and condemn us for opening anywhere but on tengen. In the process they would slacken and ultimately remove our failing grasp of a game of our own creation that we've been striving to master for millennia. What could we then claim as our own, as a species?
And in two decades, supercomputers will prove to us, conclusively, that we have no souls and will immediately proceed to devour our insides.
