AlphaGo. It’s a beautiful story about Artificial Intelligence (AI), professional Go players, the game of Go and humanity. Some key learnings for me:
- You can still win when you take only what you need
AlphaGo, the AI system, consistently took only what it needed to win in all its Go matches. It doesn’t go for the biggest score or extra territory. Granted, it behaved that way because it was programmed to win regardless of margin.
This though was enough to make a dent in my heart. It made me self-reflect – why can’t I just take what I need? Why do I need to win big all the time?
The small wins add up anyways, so there is no need to feel insecure about it.
- Accepting myself
Fan Hui, the Go player featured in the documentary remarked that AlphaGo is like a mirror. When you play with AlphaGo, you will start to see your true character. The first time you see yourself, you may not want to see or accept it. You’ll question: Is this me? Is this the real me? After that whole process, the more you need to accept: Ok, this is me. What can I do about it now?
I felt like Fan Hui, was explaining about my situation. 😂
Meditation is my mirror. The more I self-reflect during meditation class, the more ugliness is revealed about my character. Judgmental, petty, acting superior – it was all within me.
When I started to notice them, I was in denial because I did not think I was that kind of person. As mentioned in the documentary however, the more I see, the more I need to accept. Only after accepting, can I take action and do something about it. This is where real growth begins.
- The human intuition
Lee Sedol in Game 4 against AlphaGo made move 78, called God’s move. It is termed so because it is a move that only 1 in 10,000 people will ever make. To Lee Sedol however it was the only move that he saw at that time. And it was this move that helped him win the only game against AlphaGo.
This move felt so hopeful. After all the despair of losing and losing and losing, it seems like our biggest advantage over AI is intuition.
Our intuition is truly remarkable, and something that we have not even begin to understand how it works. Yet, when we trust and take action based on it, the results are always incredible.
I’ve learnt to listen to my intuition more and more after I’ve started meditation. In fact, it became clearer after meditation cleared the stresses away.
I immensely enjoyed this documentary, which I discovered through the meditation video below. From this meditation video, it led to a Google search that led to this documentary and its key learnings. Intuition and nature’s flow at play? 😍😉 Enjoy! 😊
