Interest in Go has been fading long before AI came to the party. It took a leap with Hikaru No Go, much like the Queen's Gambit has young people retake an interest in Chess. They don't care whether AI (or non-AI Deep Blue) has long surpassed mankind. Almost 20 years later, the Hikaru effect is long gone and people's interest goes wherever it goes: video games, sports, tiktok, movies ...

Personally AI has had a positive impact on my interest in Go. And I can imagine that for others it has a negative one. But to gauge the impact on the whole go community, you need research, not whim.

Wow, there's a lot to unpack there

Not entirely sure what 'whim' (sudden change of mind) is supposed to mean there, but from the context I'm guessing it's meant to be a belittling term for "experience-based opinion." Let's take that first. We all know that most actions in our daily life have to be based on best guesses, that is based on past experience and opinion. It is the human condition. Sometimes we can add research to the mix, but generally that just means trusting somebody else's opinion. It is highly unlikely that any research would ever be done on AI's effect on go or chess interest, but if it were it would almost certainly start with some assumptions (quite possibly false) and then be a sampling of opinions of different people. If that's correct, I could argue that what I have done, by reading widely and asking for others' opinions is in fact 'research'. In the course of that 'research' I have come to the conclusion that opinion on L19 (with its top-heavy dose of mathematicians and programmers) is heavily skewed in favour of AI but opinion in the pro-based countries seems to tilt strongly the other way.

For those who have to fork out money, i.e. sponsors, I would suspect that they too would rely on experienced-based opinion, though I also suspect they would call it expert opinion. But it's opinion nonetheless.

As to the earlier fading of interest in go, I would not dispute that, but it's irrelevant here. There's no cause and effect. In fact it's a subtle form of the coin-toss fallacy. Thinking six heads in a row means a head is more likely on toss seven. Or here, thinking that continual fading interest in go means that more fading must be due to what went before, and not to the introduction of a new element (AI).

But the biggest issue is comparing, in the current context, the positive and negative impacts. I think we can agree they both exist, but that does not make them comparable. A positive effect on making go/chess more interesting for an existing player leaves the go/chess population X at value X. But a negative effect on an amateur go player is very likely to lead to a population of X - 1.

To make a genuine comparison, one would have to cite a positive case where a non-player is excited enough by AI to take up the game anew, i.e. X + 1. I'm pretty sure such people may exist but I've only come across one and he was more interested in the programming and I've come across many of the X - 1 persuasion.

Go and chess are susceptible to so many influences that interest in either becomes a Marmite issue. For example, in chess many people are put off the game by draws. Many are also put off by having to memorise reams of opening lines. In go, many people are apparently put off by what they regard as unclear rules. When I started go, many people were put off by thinking it was a Japanese game (post-war anti-Japanese sentiment was still strong then). Given the impact that issues like that (and there are more) have had on both games, I don't see why it should surprise anyone that a huge issue like AI can have both predictable and unpredictable consequences on different individuals.

It's not entirely germane, but I think the following quotation from an article I read just an hour or so ago is worth mulling over. It is from a report on the world chess championship Game 2:

"The difficulty posed for Nepomniachtchi was that he was no longer "choosing off a menu" but rather choosing moves blindly against a 3600-rated engine that was behind Ding's at-home preparation."

Depending on whether you are a bottle half-full or bottle half-empty man you could highlight the fact that the human bested the computer preparation, or you could say (as I do) that preparing at home with a team of seconds plus computers is not much different from an athlete taking drugs. But, however you look at this bottle, I honestly can't see that it is of any interest to non-chess players. And given Carlsen's opting out, presumably such chess is not of much interest to people like him.

I think the fundamental difference in this debate is actually nothing to do with logic. I think the real difference is between amateur players who want to be stronger (i.e. they are more interested in themselves and believe AI will help them) and those who are more interested in other people, i.e. the pros. There is no obvious reason to think that either group is intrinsically better than the other, but the latter group is, I would imagine, of far more interest to pros and their sponsors, and so to that extent that group is ultimately going to be more important for the future of the game. After all, where would pro soccer be without the armchair fans or the fans on the terraces, or the merchandise-buying classes, and instead they were no fans but just amateurs who play in the park at the weekend?

Presumably the newspapers did the research for us and it's bleak. Of course, there are other things impacting the papers besides interest in Go. But it appears that interest in newspaper sponsored Go is declining, or at least not as profitable. Maybe the interest for Go is out there somewhere else.

On my end, I have tried to track down the newspaper commentaries, even going as far as trying to subscribe to several of the paper's online publication. And of course I don't speak Japanese but it was a bit troublesome to even find where to look.

I wonder if some consolidation, like what is being done to the Honinbo, might be good after all. At least some silver lining.

Professional sports depends on extracting money from fans, both directly (tickets/merchandise) and also indirectly (television revenue). The indirect television revenue is ultimately paid for with ads, of course. The economics of go should be similar, with direct revenue coming from go books and lessons (teaching, really) and indirect revenue coming from ads run in newspapers (also Go Weekly, I assume).

It strikes me that the combination of free AI strikes directly at the market for teaching material, while the existence of free game records strikes at the market for following your favourite player. I don't need to shell out for a book of commentaries or joseki if I have an AI sitting on my desk that will answer questions instantly. And I have more than enough game records to keep me busy for a lifetime. Of course, there are good reasons to buy books--I shell out for John Fairbairn's whenever he releases them. Nevertheless, I suspect the advent of AI will force publishers and pros to consider their offerings.

The upheavals associated with the introduction of AI looks a little like what professionals endured as the traditional go houses lost support and pros had to find new ways of earning a living. Ultimately a new tournament system was born, they brought go to the masses with newspaper columns and they refined the art of the printed commentary. Hopefully this will be a bump in the road that is disruptive but not devastating.

This might be a bit of an oversimplification. If the goal of sponsors is to attract many people to watch their tournament, more than the "go population", the "people who will watch the tournament" number is more important. It's feasible that someone who has played go before, but gained more interest in the game due to AI, would end up watching a tournament they previously would have skipped.

It reminds me of the "1000 true fans" article by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

If you take on the goal of having truly diehard fans, you don't need a huge number of those folks to be profitable.

I will note that I have no doubts that the number of people watching tournaments may be decreasing. But there may be a way to still achieve sufficient interest from the diehards with the proper strategy.

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be immersed

I heard about this on Saturday at the Nihon Kiin from one of the pros that I know. He seemed to take it as a natural event due to the overall situation of print newspapers in Japan (as John Tilley posted about earlier in this thread). It seems that the Asahi Shimbun is also reorganizing this year (http://yoshizuka.com/index.php/2022/10/ ... 3-million/ this is from the same source that John cited for the Mainichi). Can the Meijin Sen survive in its current form?

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

The evolution of FFG subscribers is shown on page 27 of this document: https://ffg.jeudego.org/informations/of ... AG2022.pdf (I have a more recent version of this graph but I can't upload it on this forum).

Only Hikaru had a large impact between 2002 and 2012. After 2016, the steady decline wasn't affected by AI. We are now back to the pre-covid trend despite recent efforts to develop online activities (Discord server, game commentaries on Twitch, online go club,...).

I think there needs to be reimagining of how the promotion of baduk is approached. It would take admitting uncomfortable truths but it would work. I'll release the full text in a few days. But everyone is so used to the old approach they think it's the only approach. But you use an approach that starts with the perspective of the wider public rather than that of those who already play. The pessimism is based on the narrowminded assumption that there aren't far more effective methods that haven't been tried much. Hint: there are. But I've realised the entire approach normally taken without even a second thought is completely backwards, makes it 10x harder and is the root cause of many of the mentioned problems. I hope by May substantial progress would be made and by learn baduk week in September the trend would be reversed. By five years when I go off on my life in nature away from society, I hope that 바둑 would be on the up and up and up!

Funny that Hikaru no Go was mentioned in the thread. Although fiction, I think it tries to show many aspects of go in a realistic way (kind of...).

The final saga of the manga, the North Star Cup, features:
- A new pro whose family doesn't support because go is not interesting any more.
- A company that wants to sponsor a tournament. Not because they are interested in go or is a traditional thing (unlike newspapers), but because they think it could have a positive effect. A regular sponsor, after all.
- The role of Japan, China and Korea in the international scene.

According to the chief of the sponsoring company, it is a team tournament because if it was individual "only fans would follow it".
And according to Yashiro's father, it is not that being a pro is good or not. It is that go itself has little future.
About the result of the tournament, Japan lost.

I compare the manga (from about 20 years ago) with the current situation, and what comes to my mind is that what is happening now should be of little surprise. People who know about this world probably saw it coming.

Spot on. Hotta Yumi, her husband and Obata Takeshi were not 바둑 players before making the manga so they had an outsiders perspective and knew how to make the game attractive to a wider demographic, which is not quite something people who've lived there lives in a bubble of studying 바둑 8 hours and making money in a way completely foreign to how the rest of the population with normal 9-5 jobs make money. Especially Hotta Yumi先生 had talent. But we should aim even higher than dear 先生 and expand to attracting demographic. We very well know all you numbers people are a friendly bunch, but why do you think you're entitled to others making prudent, reasonable and unbaised assessment of you based on evidence of how they've seen you behave, when you very well know that the standard is for people to make stupid and biased assumptions of who other people based on what group they're in and false and incomplete information, because every single one of us in the 바둑 community do the very same thing. In fact this is my main issue when promoting 바둑, it being done to us, and rarely us doing it to others. You could go on my dumb twitter if you're clever enough to find it, I you don't but if you're clever enough to find it you deserve it, but time is limited as I intend to 'fix' my stupid twitter account , and derive opposite completely false assumptions about me. I have accepted that people who go on might incorrectly assume I am an ethnoAfrican nationalist anticipating the volcanic destruction of the USA or a mysoginist lolicon or a Feminist grannycon Genderqeer outcast that cannot fit in. Okay maybe that last part has a grain of truth but I can't even fit in with the groups of people who can't fit in, I am an outcast among outcasts, That's why my thinking is so idiosyncratic. To be fair just the thought of both left-wing and right-wing politics is revolting to me, maybe it would get to a vomit-inducing level even. Anyway actually my body is not producing or responding to quite a few chemicals, if I felt anything other than purely artistic attraction even looking yet alone posting would be embarrassing, but that is a problem, I'd become too shy and self-conscious like in my younger days, which would be a pain, so I just stay mentally ill, but I can't stand my intelligence levels being so low and getting lower for over 5 years so I must fix it by avoiding the chemicals I became allergic too. Wow after 10 years I'm comfortable enough to say I am part of the baduk community and not some imposter haha!

The 바둑 comunnity too should fully accept that to a lot of narrow-minded people the 바둑 community will look like a bunch of bland dry people with mant numbers people who are probably mysoginst. I think that's a sentiment John Fairbairn Sensei had been at pains to express, as a journalist he's more sensitive and experienced in the reality of outside perception of news and communities. Even though our personal experience may be the opposite, but apart from childish 24 year olds like me who thinks Molang is one of the best shows ever I find it weird that most people have an infantile attitude to the possibility of this dissonance . . . wait now I think about I think maybe 5 years ago I made an embarrassing song praising the 바둑 community to the theme of The Cat Returns theme tune, my favourite movie, and then discovered later that that the US congress has a song cover competition, haha but I only remember the chorus now, haha, but I can't assume that my personal positive experience would be something non-바둑 players assume. I will never understand this profound lack of self-awareness in the 바둑 community that the way we're percieved on the outside can be completely different to the reality. There is an almost infantile mentality that the way we're perceived should be left to fate or chance, one I would neveer understand.


What a sentence . . . Really . . . Wow, sign me up to an individual version of the tournament! In my opinion small hands like mine are for a refined and elegant taste! I would also add that as fate would have it I just one of our European pros has noted suffering the consequences of reckless, thoughtless, insensitive and unsafe behaviour from a Korean pro, so maybe fix your own house and put in in order before complaining that no one wants to sleepover at your house! Yep that's some Dr Jo Pete philosophy right there, fix yourself before getting angry at the world not playing 바둑!

I would add that professionals have been way too slow in adopting online games. It shouldn't take a pandemic to force it's adoption. I used to basically agree with their mentality when I was a kid but now I think the professional prude to online official games is self-destructive. While on the begginer level the opposite is true, as time goes on I find it more and more distasteful that we orient beginners to play bots and then wonder why no one wants to play 바둑. My sisters are much more likely to play a board game on a real life set than on the computer or online.