Why AI Did Not “Kill” International Chess?

Ever wondered why after Deep Blue topped the best human player Gary Kasparov, and after AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol and Ke Jie, the best human player then, there was no drop in passion and enthusiasm in international chess (Deep Blue) and Go (AlphaGo). Instead, there is now a strong interest in chess, followed by the human chess player using these computer chess players to level themselves up.

Back during the period, when AlphaGo managed to beat both Lee Sedol and Ke Jie within 2 years, a lot of speculations were that it might spell the end of Go Chess because most people would lose enthusiasm for it because the pinnacle of chess is now a supercomputer.

I was quite intrigued by this phenomenon because both international chess AND GO proved otherwise. At least I will be keen to pick up both chess, together with Chinese and Shogi. Yah, ambitious prick. :P

But coming back, I wanted to crack this and understand why the enthusiasm for chess is still there. And of course, you guessed it, I have a possible explanation.

Internalizing Knowledge

Humans want to internalize their knowledge. Let us look from a survival perspective, knowledge of food and water sources is kept within the brain so we can access it whenever we need to. It is safer! This will also explain the process of how humans memorize things, pushing the essential knowledge to the working memory, followed by the brain deciding that the knowledge is essential for survival and thus moving it from working memory to long-term memory.

Internalizing knowledge also satisfies our hoarding instinct as we try to remember as much as possible. You can see this “hoarding instinct” based on how our human culture glorifies people with large memory. Think Memory Olympics.

Let us bring this to something you are passionate about. One of the many things I am passionate about is “Intelligence”. I am always looking for articles to read, to learn more about intelligence in humans and machines. Even if I know there is someone who knows more than me or the online world has a lot of information about it, I do not stop reading. Why is that so? Because I get a dopamine hit every time I read something on Intelligence, especially when I come across something new or unfamiliar. That is when the dopamine hit is great! There is a psychological benefit when I learn something new or at any discussion, I can bring out certain facts or figures of Intelligence.

Similarly, passionate chess players want to play as many games as possible and each win gives them a dopamine hit. A win at a chess game means they have internalized chess into themselves well. The win is a strong testament to that.

So the key reason why enthusiasm for chess did not wane in humanity is that we derive benefits when we manage to internalize these chess skills well and apply them skillfully in the chess games that we play. :)

So what are your thoughts on this? Or do you have a different hypothesis as to why enthusiasm for chess did not drop after Deep Blue and AlphaGo? Will be keen to hear from you!

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I wrote a thought experiment on how I will set up an AI Governance Committee, i.e. what areas of knowledge and expertise I want to have. Have a read here and again I invite your perspectives and sharing. <Blog Post>

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