AI and You: The Move 36
If you have been following the development of AI over the last few years, you will want to correct me. It is not Move 36, it is Move 37. Everyone remembers Move 37. Almost no one talks about Move 36. You are right to correct me, but here is why I am still calling this Move 36.
If you have not followed the story, let me give you some context.
Demis Hassabis started Google DeepMind in London in 2010, with the primary goal of building Artificial General Intelligence.
After years of struggle and deep research, the team developed AlphaGo, an AI that could play the ancient game of Go. Once they had run enough tests and built enough confidence, the engineers at DeepMind decided it was ready to show the world.
They set up a match. Five games, pitting AlphaGo against Lee Sedol, an 18 time world champion and one of the greatest Go players of the modern era. Before this tournament, computer scientists believed a machine beating a top tier Go professional simply was not possible, given the game's near infinite complexity and its reliance on human intuition.
AlphaGo had already shocked the world by winning Game 1. Game 2 was Lee Sedol's chance to hit back. Instead, it became the stage for one of the most unusual moments in the history of artificial intelligence.
AlphaGo was playing black. On its 37th move, it placed a stone on the fifth line from the edge, in the upper right of the board. In 2,500 years of Go, convention held that playing the fifth line so early was a serious mistake.
About 100 moves later, the significance of that move became clear. The stone AlphaGo had placed hours earlier turned out to be in exactly the right position to shut down Lee Sedol's territory and win the game.
Move 37 is widely seen as the Sputnik moment for modern AI. It showed that machine learning had moved beyond copying human data. The AI could show something like creativity, and come up with strategies no human had ever thought of. Lee Sedol later said the move was beautiful, and that it made him see the ancient game in a completely new light.
But Move 37 was only possible because Lee Sedol played Move 36. And it was only possible because of Move 35 before that. And Move 1 before that. None of these moves matters more than the others. Move 37 gets the headlines because it is dramatic, but we forget it only happened because of Move 36, and everything that came before it.
It is worth holding onto that when you look at your own life. Do not get stuck thinking that what you are doing right now does not matter. Most of the time, you will only know if something was your Move 37 by looking back at it.
A while ago, someone shared a post comparing the revenue per employee of Anthropic and Bosch. The gap was huge. But that does not mean what Bosch does matters less for humanity. It simply means they are playing a different game, with a different scoreboard. The engineer working quietly at Bosch today may be playing their own Move 36, without ever knowing it.
So keep playing. You may not find out which move mattered until many moves from now.