Life In 19x19

Hey colleagues,

First thing that made an impression on me was when I was walking in Barnes & Noble,I saw they had two Gobans for sale! Never before have I seen Gobans for sale in a book-store, or in any store unless they were Chinese or Oriental ones. When I brought the board at the register, the cashier was like "Oh thats a great game! Did you know that Lee Sedol got beaten yesterday again" ?

NEVER again some random person knew the game of Go! So maybe AlphaGo is not as bad as I thought it was...

Anyways, do you think it helped the popularity of Go in the Western World? I know it is already very popular in Asia.

More people came by the forum after the games. I remember the count of guests reaching almost one hundred.

GoGameGuru announced that there was a worldwide shortage on go equipment. Anders Kierulf reported a significant boom in beginner book sales on his Go Books app. I've chatted with several youtubers whose subscriptions spiked noticeably.

So I'd guess, yeah. Now, how can we sustain it?

I think its more likely that it spread awareness of the game to an audience not typically in touch with such things. Its up to the local clubs and communities to spread the popularity now that more folks have heard of it (and may be interested in learning more).

This is quite amazing:


Page views for the Wikipedia article Go (game), as shown on this page

First spike is after the news was out about the AlphaGo/Fan Hui games, second spike of course during the DeepMind Challenge AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol.

Demis Hassabis wrote:The numbers are in: 280M viewers, 35K articles, 10x more Go boards sold. Hopefully the match inspired many people to play this amazing game.

Between the above quote (from the Twitter feed of one of the AlphaGo developers) and Go Game Guru's article about a shortage of go equipment, I'd say a lot of new players have been trying the game. One of the key questions, I think, is whether there is enough easily accessible beginner's materials to make their early experience of the game enjoyable. Regardless, at least some will surely stick with the game.

I'd say that AlphaGo had enough presence in the media that it's helped the everyday person to at least know what go is...

I still wish AlphaGo didn't happen, though :-p I guess that's life.

WOW! It seems that it did! The shortage of go equipment itself proved it.

Kirby wrote:I'd say that AlphaGo had enough presence in the media that it's helped the everyday person to at least know what go is...

I still wish AlphaGo didn't happen, though :-p I guess that's life.

Why do you wish it didn't happen? I also wished it didn't happen, but I am curious if your reason is the same as mine, lol.

I think the professional name Janice Kim post on her facebook after AlphaGo match that she want Go to remain pure, untouched game, the queen of the board game, but for an unknown reason all of her post are now private post.

Stefany93 wrote:Why do you wish it didn't happen? I also wished it didn't happen, but I am curious if your reason is the same as mine, lol.

My feelings are complicated, so it is difficult to precisely express the reason.

Someone from another thread expressed it better than I've been able to: for several years now, I've associated my personal identity with the game of go. For my job, I am a programmer, but more than a "computer scientist", I've associated myself with being a "go player". With AlphaGo's breakthrough, the game of go feels to have become a subset of "computer science", rather than an orthogonal endeavor. If I want to get closer to solving go, it would be better to pursue a computer solution, rather than studying go.

I used to feel "unique" or "special" in some ways. I had a unique interest in a game that not many people knew about or were good at. I had special knowledge of how the game worked. It made me, personally, feel special.

But in March, that "special" part of me died. The knowledge I've been pursuing through go no longer feels unique or special. It's just some extensive study I've done on one of the many problems that computers have solved. It makes what I've been studying feel less special and less significant. It makes go seem ordinary.

It's not just with go. Another "special" part of me has been my study of language. I thought it was neat to know Korean and Japanese when many of my peers didn't. It gave me some sort of pride. But I read the other day that in a matter of years, foreign languages won't be an issue. Computer translation will have advanced such that people could carry microphones to do live translation. When that day comes, my Korean and Japanese abilities will not be special. They will not be unique. They will just be some obscure hobby I spent my time on, which doesn't really matter, since computers can do it better anyway.

Advancement in technology continues to make our lives easier. But as computers solve problems and make the world an easier place to live, it makes me personally feel less and less significant...

And perhaps, reminds me of my mortality, which computers do not share.

Kirby wrote:My feelings are complicated, so it is difficult to precisely express the reason.

I thought you were here for my entertainment

Joking aside, I think I understand your point but at the same time I don't really get it. Lee Sedol's defeat is just a step in computers' dominance over humans, but amateur dan level play have been already "non-special" for quite a while. Now of course there's the whole symbol and mediatic thing - and as a general rule I like when man's pride takes a blow - and I can also appreciate that every step is a step can be seen as a step in the wrong direction.

But way before computer, I was already dominated in pretty much every go-related way by professionnals in some faraway country - I couldn't play them, but I knew they existed - or even by other players from my country. The only advantage I could still mantain was availability - I am here now and I can review your game - and my main competitor in this regard was the Internet, rather than stronger players. Strong dan players from 30-20 years ago told me the big difference in information availability between then and today, and how every dan player were used and squeezed and the only source of knowledge for weaker ambitious players. In this way I feel much less special than a dan player from then.

The computer dominating mankind doesn't give me the feeling that I will only be able do a pale copy of something that is better done by someone/something else, nor am I depressed that I won't be able to create new "useful" knowledge for mankind to play better go. All of this I knew a decade ago already, and it would stay true were GnuGo the best computer today.

Instead of thinking of AlphaGo's victory as an historic first, I prefer to think that Lee Sedol was the last human to be beaten by a computer.

NiallMcC wrote:Lee Sedol was the last human to be beaten by a computer.

Should there be a "not" somewhere in this sentence?

the last human to be beaten by a computer.

Should there be a "not" somewhere in this sentence?

The meaning was that it was an end of an era
(which of course also means a new beginning --
glass half empty/half full! )

EdLee wrote:

the last human to be beaten by a computer.

Should there be a "not" somewhere in this sentence?

The meaning was that it was an end of an era
(which of course also means a new beginning --
glass half empty/half full! )

I think he meant that LSD was the last human to beat a computer (of AG+ strength, of course)