Year 2016, Seoul, the newly-built Four Seasons hotel, a historical duel between the Korean Go master Lee Sedol and the computer program Alpha_Go. The human player felt huge pressure of representing the entire human kind. After his third loss to the computer program, the master confessed during the press conference:

I think that I disappointed too many of you. Forgive me for helplessness. I have never felt such pressure, such burden. I think I was too weak to overcome that.

The international performative project titled AlphaGo_Lee: Theory of Sacrifice explores the influence of artificial intelligence and machine learning on the image of human civilization (which is more and more often referred to as “traditional”).

The “Historical game” was an event organized by Google so that it could gain the maximum media attention. The match took place before the company’s economic “comeback” to the Chinese market at that time. The precisely planned PR campaign reached millions of viewers all over the world in order to create a symbolical moment of final defeat of human kind against AI.

The show – a theatrical reconstruction of the above-mentioned duel, involving the audience in the shape of the play, analyzing the social and environmental costs of the current technological development. The project integrates the audience’s actions with the newest digital tools, changing and redefining the meaning of “participation” in theatrical events.

Despite of what the technological industry tries to tell us, AI is not a superhuman entity. The space of the theater, participation in the performance’s matter, active reception, and the ability to have an impact give the opportunity to discover the actual power promoted in the slogans about the supremacy of artificial intelligence.

The play uses excerpts from the documentary film AlphaGo, directed by Greg Kohs and produced in 2017, with the permission and courtesy of Google DeepMind.

With sincere gratitude, we thank the following individuals for their invaluable contributions:
Piotr Mirowski, Deep Mind
Prof. Chihyung Jeon, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Prof. Chihyung Nam, Department of Baduk (GO) Studies, Myongji University
Toma Urasose, Japan Go Association
London Mind Center

Special thanks to Net Gala for providing the song “The Dog.”

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