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.