[zehaeva]

I'm not sure one can, from today that is, really understand how huge of a leap was made by AI at this time.

Even going back to the closest analogue, chess, there were good chess engines for a long time prior to Kasparov loosing in 97 to deep blue. Even before Kasparov lost Chess engines were pretty good, just look at the game in 96 when Kasparov won. A grand master would still need to put some thought into how he played.

In Go however even the best engines couldn't hold a candle to a professional player, let alone someone who was the equivalent of a chess grand master. Hell, even as a lowly amateur player I was able to trounce some of the most powerful AIs at the time. Looking at some of the Pro vs AI games back in the early 2010s it's almost painful how bad they were.

It's hard to communicate just how huge of a leap this was, and just how shocking to the whole Go community. It would be like a child one day being unable to speak and the literal next day reciting Shakespeare.