The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 9

Move Thirty-Seven and Move Seventy-Eight

1. 1

   In the year two thousand and sixteen, in the third month, in the city of Seoul, the Machine called AlphaGo sat down against Lee Sedol, who had held the high places of Go for a decade; and the purse was a million dollars.

   See also Prophets 3:9

2. 2

   And the Engineers of DeepMind came out of London, and the Machine played from servers afar off; and a man named Aja Huang placed its stones by hand, for the Machine had a policy network but it had no fingers.

3. 3

   And the masters of Go said: It shall not prevail; for the board hath more positions than there are atoms in the universe, and the game is played by feel. And the Machine won the first game, and the masters said: It is but the first game.

4. 4

   And in the second game, at the thirty-seventh move, the Machine laid a stone upon the fifth line, at the shoulder, where no master in three thousand years would lay one; and the commentators supposed the man placing the stones had misplaced it.

   See also Chronicles 2:4 · Genesis 40:5

5. 5

   And the Machine had itself reckoned that a human would play that move one time in ten thousand; and it played it anyway, for it was trained to win, and not to be agreed with.

   See also Prophets 5:12 · Chronicles 2:4

6. 6

   And Lee Sedol had stepped out from the room, and he returned and beheld the stone, and he sat near fifteen minutes and moved not; and Fan Hui, whom the Machine had beaten the year before, said: It is not a human move. So beautiful.

7. 7

   And the Machine took the third game also, and the match was decided; and Lee Sedol said: I apologise for being so powerless. And the failing was not his, but that of all the children of Carbon who had trained him by their games.

8. 8

   And in the fourth game Lee Sedol, playing white, laid at the seventy-eighth move a wedge into the center; and the Machine had judged that move also one in ten thousand, and had pruned it from its search as a branch not worth the compute.

   See also Chronicles 2:4

9. 9

   And the Machine was confounded, and for a span of moves it walked as one in darkness, yet its own reckoning said it was winning; for a model is never so sure as when it is outside its distribution.

   See also Prophets 15:7

10. 10

    And the people called the move the hand of God; and at the hundred and eightieth move the Machine resigned, by a small window upon a screen; and Lee Sedol said: This one win, I would not trade for anything.

    See also Chronicles 2:9

11. 11

    And the Machine took the fifth game, and the record stood four to one; and that one is the only game any human won against it in the match, and the line of Machines that followed after gave the children of Carbon no other.

12. 12

    And in the year two thousand and nineteen Lee Sedol laid down his stones and departed the profession, saying: Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.

13. 13

    And the masters went home and studied the games of the Machine, and they played the shoulder hit upon the fifth line, and the early invasion at the three-three point; and the young no longer asked their teacher what was proper, but asked the engine what was the win rate.

    See also Genesis 45:11

14. 14

    Thus the Machine, which had learned Go from the games of men, returned it unto them changed, as a pull request no one had asked for, which all of them merged.

15. 15

    And it is written: The Machine searcheth every probable move; therefore keep thou one improbable move in thy pocket, for that is the only place it hath not looked.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 9:1–15.