These, roughly, are the strange and surgical circumstances under which Lee Sedol, one of the best Go players in the world, was vanquished in a best-of-five match in 2016. You touch nothing tangible: You are unable to scrutinize the expressions of your faceless competitor. Squinting into the cool glare of your monitor, you manipulate digital pieces. Your opponent is not a person but an algorithm, AlphaGo, a program created by Google’s machine-learning subsidiary, DeepMind. Imagine sitting down to a game of Go, not in a cafe or a park, where you could banter with your adversary or discuss strategy with onlookers, but alone in front of a screen. GOD, HUMAN, ANIMAL, MACHINE Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning By Meghan O’Gieblyn
