AI’s Impact on the Go Community in South Korea: A Preliminary Study of AlphaGo’s Legacy

This article outlines a preliminary study on the societal impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the Korean Go community following AlphaGo’s 2016 victory over the human champion of the time, Lee Se-dol. While the technical achievements of Go AI have been widely publicised and discussed, its cultural and social implications remain understudied, especially for learners and Go enthusiasts who constitute the largest groups of the Korean Go community. Drawing on existing literature, this study identifies three key areas for ethnographic inquiry: 1) the dismantling of long-standing human-centred Go knowledge by AI; 2) the uneven responses of community members to these shifts; and 3) the need to investigate the extent to which concepts such as expertise, pedagogy, and leisure motivate their use of AI.