AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol: The Go Match That Changed Artificial Intelligence

In March 2016, a quiet board game played on a grid of black lines forced the world to reconsider what artificial intelligence was capable of. There were no flashing robots, no humanoid voices—just stones placed one by one on a wooden board. Yet as AlphaGo faced Lee Sedol, a champion considered among the greatest Go players in history, something fundamental began to shift. This was not supposed to happen yet. Not this soon. Go, after all, had long been described as the final stronghold of human intuition. Why Go was different For decades, Go represented a boundary artificial intelligence could not cross. Unlike chess, its branching possibilities were so vast that brute-force calculation was useless. Strong Go play relied on…