F
inally, it came to an end — the competition between a human and a machine, the kind of thing only seen previously in sci-fi films. The match between Lee Se-dol, a 9-dan grandmaster of the ancient board game go (fourth in global rankings), who carried the hopes of humankind, and AlphaGo, the proto-artificial intelligence system, marked an extraordinary milestone in the history of civilization. The machine’s challenge to a game whose core principles involve human intuition and creativity was an epochal event pointing to the future of artificial intelligence.
Go, the Simplest Game in the World No game in the world could have simpler rules than go. Western board games like backgammon require special playing pieces, while chess and janggi (Chinese: xiangqí) are played with a variety of pieces. But all that’s needed to play go are the black and white pieces called “stones” and a board marked with a grid of vertical and horizontal lines. When the stones are not available, pebbles or even pieces of wood will do. At an overseas seminar some time ago, I saw a Korean professor playing go with a foreign scholar by marking their moves on a sheet of graph paper with a pencil. The rules are also so simple that anybody can learn them in just 10 minutes. In fact, there is only one rule for placing stones on the board: you can’t place your stone in a spot which has just been vacated through capture and removal by the opponent. It is generally accepted that go originated in ancient China, and indeed it is in China that the earliest records of the game are found. One theory has it that Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor, one of the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of China, created the game for the education of his children. Whether that’s the case or not, it’s certain the game was already played between 475 and 221 B.C. during the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, in view of references to the game in the classic texts “The Analects of Confucius” and “The Mencius.” The game was likely introduced to Korea in the fourth or fifth century, during the Three Kingdoms period. Before computers and the Internet, go was a favorite pastime of Koreans. There was nothing like a game of go to keep two adults occupied for hours on end. Go is different from other board games in that a vast array of strategies can be used, and there is a great difference between the skill levels of professionals and amateurs. It is next to impossible for an amateur player to accidentally beat an experienced master. Hence, the barrier between skilled and unskilled players is substantial, such that a novice has virtually no chance against an expert without a handicap. Go has developed as a game that represents the essence of East Asian traditions, exerting a noticeable impact on the culture of each country in this region. It abounds with Eastern symbolism and mysticism, as reflected in the unapproachable world of the masters, the contrasting colors of the stones that represent yin and yang, and the board’s 19×19 grid with 361 intersecting points, which signify the
myriad celestial bodies. In Korea, many go terms are used in the fields of politics, economics, and culture. The term cho-ilkgi, which originally referred to the 60-second countdown before each move, is widely used to indicate the dwindling amount of time left before some decision must be made. Other go-based terms include kkotnori-pae , meaning only one side has a lot to lose; bokgi, an evaluation process; chogangsu, a last-ditch move; susun, a sequential move; and hogu, literally “jaws of the tiger,” referring to a serious crisis . The Western worldview, which is often mechanical and materialistic, differs from the Eastern worldview that gives deference to human emotions and spirituality. In classical Asian literature, for example, the sound of the lid of a boiling teakettle rattling up and down would evoke a sense of pathos. In the West, however, the focus would be placed on the mechanical power of the steam that forced the teakettle lid to bounce up and down. James Watt’s steam engine, which ignited the Industrial Revolution, was born from such scientific observation, marking the historic turning point when the power of machines began to replace the physical capability of humans.
From Steam Engine to Artificial Intelligence Furthermore, a mechanized world, once feared to make human labor redundant, moved closer to reality with the invention of the computer. With the development of modern medicine, studies have found that human intelligence is related to biochemical interaction of brain cells. When it was understood that mental disorders are not the wicked work of the devil but are caused by defective neurotransmitters in the brain, human intelligence and cognitive sciences emerged as new fields of study. Under scientific organization of a materialistic worldview, machines began to catch up with humankind’s mental capacity. The concept of artificial intelligence first emerged in the 1960s. But it was only after the development of powerful hardware based on computer and semiconductor technology that the idea started to become reality. In addition, the sphere of artificial intelligence has been further expanded by big data memory storage with boundless capacity. Recently, artificial intelligence has made great strides in aircraft piloting, unmanned surveillance, facial recognition, spam email filtering, and investment advice, and is now making its advance into a variety of industrial sectors. It was the world’s leading The 9-dan go champion Lee IT firm Google that first caught onto Se-dol (right) plays a match these winds of change. It got off to a against Google DeepMind’s proto-artificial intelligence head start in the development of an AI program AlphaGo. Sitting system for the future through its puracross from Lee, DeepMind’s chase of DeepMind, the British artifilead programmer Aja Huang, an amateur 6-dan player himself, cial intelligence company that develplaces stones on the board for oped AlphaGo, for £400 million (some AlphaGo. Lee was beaten 4-1 in $650 million). the five-game match. KOREAN CULTURE & ARTS 37