AlphaGo 本周与柯洁比赛在有关方面的干预下被大大降低了新闻报道的权重，你可以将其理解为有司担心人工智能胜利后引发民众恐慌，你可以认为这是为了防范公众过度讨论 Google 的一种举措，但无论如何，正如我多次在会员通讯里的判断：这次比赛之于围棋、之于人类，其意义已微乎其微。
考虑到围棋在西方世界是一个小众游戏，这几天美国媒体对比赛的报道也仅仅局限在 AlphaGo 又一次击败了人类围棋选手层面，除此之外并没有太多深层次的讨论。反而是 Steven Levy 对于 20 年前「深蓝」打败卡斯帕罗夫的回忆更有共鸣，当时 Levy 还是《商业周刊》的记者，他回忆了报道出炉时的情形：
In my own tribe’s form of jousting, I had campaigned for the cover, despite the editor’s declaration that “we will never run a cover about chess.” I successfully argued that this was not about a game of chess, but rather about a much more epic contest between human and artificial intelligence. What clinched it was the cover line I suggested: “The Brain’s Last Stand.”
事实上，「深蓝」出现的 1997 年还处在人工智能又一个「冬天」里，全世界也还在 PC 互联网即将爆发的前夜。如今，人工智能再次得以复兴，世界也从 PC 互联网快速演进到移动互联网，并正在大踏步来到后移动互联网时代。Levy 不无感慨地写道：
Amazingly, when the Deep Blue match occurred, AI was in its “winter” peri0d. Now it is flowering. We hear of amazing machine learning accomplishments on a daily basis. But in 2017, we view them differently. We view them as inevitabilities.
The prime example is last year’s contest, during which DeepMind’s AlphaGo program thumped an 18-time world champion in a series of five games. Go is a much more challenging feat for a computer than chess. Yet AlphaGo did not need to resort to any of the tactics that IBM used to distract, deceive, and ultimately destroy Kasparov. The human champion, Lee Sedol, ended with respect for his opponent and awe for how far computer science had come. But though the match deservedly received attention, it was nowhere near as mythic as the Deep Blue match was. The ground has shifted. Given enough time, money, and machine learning, there’s no cognitive obstacle that machines will not surmount.
对此，Levy 担心地认为，或许我们更应该担心研发这些机器或部署这些机器的人。尽管 Levy 马上承认自己有点情绪化，毕竟作为报道硅谷技术发展长达 30 年的老记者，Levy 很清楚当下人工智能与世人期望之间的巨大差距，比如同样是在本周发生的一件事，一直以来以人工智能作为自己「员工」的 Facebook，居然还有 4500 人的内容审核团队……