Introduction: The Birth of a New Domain

On March 9, 2016, AlphaGo the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered system developed by the team of data scientists at a Google-owned company called Deep Mind Technologies stunned the Go world by defeating the 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in game one of the best of five contests. During the second of the five games AlphaGo made moves that no human player ever would, prompting Lee Sedol to state his surprise that a mere machine based on probability calculations could make a move more “creative” and “beautiful” than any other opponent he has ever met. AlphaGo made Lee Sedol rethink what creativity meant. After losing the third and deciding game, Lee Sedol apologized to his peers for being “powerless.”¹ After a five-day struggle, the final score was 4 to 1 in AlphaGo’s favor. This result should have come as no surprise to those who know that there are whole categories of mathematical and probabilistic feats at which computers excel but which completely stump average humans. For instance, if the contest had involved a performance of a complicated arithmetical calculation, such as multiplying together two 30-digit numbers, it would have lasted mere seconds rather than days. By 2019, Deep Mind announced that they had created a newer version of AlphaGo that defeated the Lee Sedol’s vanquisher by a score of 100 games to 0. On November 19, 2019, Lee retired from professional Go play. In his statement, he referred to AI-based systems as entities that cannot be defeated.