Go master Lee Se-dol says he quits, unable to win over AI Go players

It seems clear that bots will dominate humans in many/most competitive closed-world games over the next couple of years:

They are already unbeatable in perfect-information games like Chess and Go. They could crush human motor racers tomorrow.

They will be unbeatable in games with limited information (Dota/Starcraft) within months.

The next frontier is donkey-space games like rps, poker and day-trading (https://universalpaperclips.gamepedia.com/Donkey_Space) where they are already beating pros. It may be another couple of years before they totally dominate here.

It would be interesting to see if chess is more or less popular now.

Consider math. It used to be that people who could do large calculations quickly in their heads were considered super useful. Now with computers and calculators, people who can do that are interesting as a novelty, but not much more than that.

I wonder if people just don’t like being inferior at something even if the comparison is a machine?

But a Rubik's cube solver is a single-player, solitaire game. Its fundamentally different.

Over in the "Cyborg Chess" community, people have already analyzed LeelaZero vs Stockfish. It turns out that Stockfish is far better at tactics (especially the endgame), while LeelaZero is better at opening positions (aka: Positional play).

There are numerous theories about the proper combination: perhaps using an Opening Book database for the first ~10 moves or so, using LeelaZero for moves ~10 through 30, and then using Stockfish to check for tactics (LeelaZero misses a lot of tactical options in the midgame, so double-check to make sure that LeelaZero doesn't lose a queen or something), as well as finish up the endgame.

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Choosing the correct combination of tools, studying these tools and coming up with a more beautiful chess game. That's cyborg chess in a nutshell. LeelaZero and Stockfish are both superhuman in terms of play, but the cyborg can choose to use both tools to play superior compared to just a singular tool.

Anyone purely using "Stockfish only" gets beaten by opening book analysis. The dude over there with 1TB of opening book databases consisting of every losing position that Stockfish tends to play will completely own you. Same thing with LeelaZero, the opening book guy will own any LeelaZero-only player. These engines have weaknesses that can be undermined with good analysis, big-data, and a bit of custom code.

That's the funny thing about these computers: they tend to play the same. So you can build opening book databases to exploit their patterns. You require a cyborg / human to play at the "level above that" to guide Stockfish / LeelaZero away from those traps.

This eclipse of human mental abilities to come will be a test to both the elite and the students of these "sporting" pursuits. With each besting we/they will be faced with a little death. And thus, it needs to go through phases of grief. As well, the individual will need to decide the ultimate question of Why. Why did they pursue this sport? Why should they continue? Why be a human?

AI will be knocking humans out of many positions of greatness (and not so great). The way we frame our future in a world where our various AI children are better than we are, is important and might be the biggest question to answer right to know the future of our species. Should we be afraid? Sure. Excited for possibilities? Yup. It's how we react to these feelings and how we ultimately act that will inform our ultimate fate.