I mean, that's like asking whether marathon runners have a future now that we've got cars. Exercising one's brain/having pleasure through the game could be an end in itself, and is independent of how machines perform.
From the article: "It is estimated that, of South Korea’s three hundred and twenty pros, only around fifty are able to earn a living on tournament winnings." This isn't going to result in massive unemployment.<p>However, cheating with computer assistance is likely to become a problem, as it is in chess.[1] (The state of the art in computer chess is now roughly at "laptop with off the shelf program can curb-stomp human world champion.")<p>[1] <a href="http://en.chessbase.com/post/yet-another-case-of-cheating-in-chess" rel="nofollow">http://en.chessbase.com/post/yet-another-case-of-cheating-in...</a>
The game play among human competitors is sure to change just as in chess, as new players will train on AlphaGo, etc. whose gameplay will differ significantly from accepted norms in a purely human playing field. For instance, chess programs can plan and optimize to a much further depth (number of moves) in terms of strategy. So, newer players like Carlsen, etc. play differently these days than older ones like Anand, etc. [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://noenthuda.com/blog/2016/03/11/how-computers-have-changed-chess/" rel="nofollow">http://noenthuda.com/blog/2016/03/11/how-computers-have-chan...</a>
The safest best for sectors of the economy that will continue to prosper under a hard-AI regime are those that involve making humans, especially the rich (eg, owners of AI-based companies) feel happy via human interactions. Go instructors are such a niche.<p>Actually I would expect game-players and game-instructors to do better than the median profession under such a scenario, because playing games against other humans for entertainment & pure enjoyment of competition is a very human pursuit.
I wouldn't write those professionals off so easily. People barely knows AlphaGo until now. Once they start learning about AlphaGo's behaviors, they may be able to come out with new tactics. No doubt it will be a collective effort from the Go community, no one can beat the machine alone.
In general I'd suggest reading "The player of Games" by Banks.
A Culture novel that explores why would someone care about being good at "boardgames" in a universe where even the dumbest appliance could easily outperform any human.
I would think this has to be a serious inflection point... As far learning how to think, strategize, competing with friends, etc go will remain. However for the extremely few say 100 really top level players, this has to in a way be disheartening... at that level its about competition, and the will, discipline and ability to advance... it has to be disheartening to know you will never be the best.<p>Its kind of like climbing mount Everest 'because it was there'. Its just not 'there' anymore.
Go has still much more to offer as it is not even close to be a solved game.
Additionally, there's handicap Go, and additionally handicaps can be applied to the machine. Go offers the possibility for players of different levels to enjoy a game.
It seems like the authors are trying to use the latest story in the Go world to write about how all the jobs will be replaced by neural networks or something. I mean, people still throw javelins even though it is fairly trivial to build a machine that shoots a projectile farther than a human can throw.<p>We still enjoy trivia games even though it is easy to google the answers. I dunno, I think it is a bit of a stretch to think AlphaGo has ended serious competitive human Go.
I'm pretty sure humans will not stop playing go at intensely high levels just because a computer can beat them.<p>The analogy to chess is an interesting one, though, not quite as straightforward as it may seem. Chess, when it was first conquered by computers a couple of decades ago, was a triumph of computer vs human, sure, but in such a different way from the way humans play it. Chess is amenable to brute force search in a way that go isn't (though I understand the chess programs really aren't pure brute force), but human chess players don't (as far as I know) really don't play chess in a brute force way, they rely in intuition, experience, and even a bit of gambling and hedging whether their opponent will "see" or "realize" the strategy in time.<p>As a result, the chess programs were winning through a "reasoning" process that was very different from what you experience watching people play the game. Something very different is going on when humans play, which makes it interesting - in that sense you can sort of dismiss the machine as playing a different game, albeit one with the same board, pieces, and rules. Instead, it's a giant calculation that happens to beat the more intuitive approach once you can search and score X positions per second through an entirely alternate approach to the game.<p>This current breakthrough with go sounds different, in that it <i>may</i> mean that computers now play go in a way that is much more similar to the way humans play it (it would be interesting to see if a chess program designed more like the go program would have a huge edge over the brute force search approach). Or, if not the same, perhaps a way that is equally if not more interesting.<p>I'm kind of bummed that I'm out of my depth on this one (I don't know go or chess well enough to really say), but it's an interesting question.
Good writing.<p>I also expect that more people will start playing Go, or like me, get a renewed interest in the game.<p>I read that Lee Sidol is planning on retiring from active play in a few years and move to the USA to evangelize the game in the West.<p>I played the South Korean national champion and the women's world champion in handicapped exhibition games in the 1970s. It would be awesome to get to do the same with Lee Sidol!
This reminds me of the 1947 story "With Folded Hands" - <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands</a> - where a post apocalyptic future is the consequence of full automation and robotics . people have no purpose left.
Well, absolutely, if they're talking about Golang that is. In all seriousness, a computer did fairly well on Jeopardy some years back, and we're still watching the game show as it's still quite relevant.
Maybe if they learn to collaborate with AI. Or eventually, get implants. As all serious professionals will need to do. That may seem far-fetched, but how many runners compete with bicyclists?
TL;DR: several personal stories about people who invested a lot of time in the game, general information about go in general as well as what's going on right now, and finally, a semi-answer with a quote:<p>“A dolphin swims faster than Michael Phelps, but we still want to see how fast he can go,” Lockhart said. “We’re humans and we care about other humans and what they can do.”<p>Too many words, too little information for one article.
Here's a related and possibly more interesting question nobody seems to be asking -- in the age of robotics and artificial intelligence, does exploitation of workers and environmental catastrophe at the point of extraction of the materials we use to build computers and robots have a future?<p>And if the answer is yes, why isn't anyone trying to use robots for that purpose?
All AI does is remove the ability to progress through the ranks accurately via online play. Unregulated online competition will suddenly become a bumpy road full of Elo-breaking presences.<p>I gather this may be a Big Deal, but except insofar as it kills the sport by a thousand cuts, 'Young Go Prodigies' have nothing to worry about.
This article is trying to answer a question no one asked. Of course Go prodigies will always have a future regardless of how well computers become at playing Go. When we start handling out championships, officially ranking computer programs and awarding prize money to them then we can have this conversation.
Why should I really be concerned about Go prodigies? Aren't there a lot more ordinary people being affected by technological unemployment who have much fewer resources to fall back on?
Forgive me, but the headline, all by itself, left me thinking:<p><pre><code> Why are there so many young programmers adopting the Go
programming language, throughout Asia, exclusively?</code></pre>