[gsklee]

On a more realistic side note... Professional Go players devote decades in training ever since their youth, giving up normal educations and lots of other more lucrative opportunities for their lives. It's very easy to imagine their frustrations now that their life-time devotion actually means nothing in front of the AI.

It's an upright denial to the way of life they so chose and devoted.

IMHO Google should donate the prize towards Go education and Go organizations instead of some random charities.

[VladKovac]

Isn't this a good thing? Why are high IQ people devoting their entire lives to a game? Maybe this will make them shift their priorities to solving problems that only really smart humans (like them) can solve.

[cli]

At the root of it, they earn a living by being entertainment. This can be applied to any of the arts or sports. Why are smart people making movies, writing fiction, making music? I think these are the sorts of things that make life worth living.

[CydeWeys]

Abstract strategy games require highly domain specific skills. These skills do not transfer to other endeavors. The world champion Go player might just end up as, had he not played Go, a mid-level lawyer or manager. Who knows. Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=nCMWxjkTAvEC&pg=PA130&lpg=...

[iopq]

Didn't happen in Chess, won't happen in Go. Entertaining a few million people is too lucrative. Everyone wants to cheer for their country in an international competition, so it's always going to have large prize pools.

[netheril96]

Uh, talent for Go doesn't translate automatically into talent for math, physics, finance or other branches of science. Even if they are, being the top Go player is probably more attractive than being a meh quant or programmer.

[geophile]

This could equally apply to the bankers -- and the software engineers who enable them -- who crashed the economy in 2008. Go and chess players have contributed much more to the world than these psychopaths.

[edraferi]

Perhaps Go playing is on it's way to being one of the first white collar jobs to be lost to AI.

I don't think people will pay to watch Go Bots square off, but I think this example of "obsolete education" is a great reminder that it's not just the assembly line jobs on the chopping block.

[m741]

Google, should they win, is donating their money to Go charities, STEM education and UNICEF.

So they're doing what you want them to (I can't find a summary of how they're allocating the money across each category). Personally I think the work UNICEF is doing to help women in developing countries is more important than Go charities, but I guess their choices should satisfy everyone.

[Cpoll]

I wouldn't worry about a quick shift like that. You can look to the Chess world, there are still plenty of masters and grandmasters earning their bread. There's still lots of interest in the human vs. human aspect of the game. In lectures, some GMs make good use of those widely available AIs for analysis, too.

[lukasb]

Why is it a denial of anything? Machines can go faster than we can and we still have the 100m dash.