AlphaGo: Intelligence, Creativity, and the Mirror
Before Class
You should have watched the full AlphaGo documentary before today's discussion. The annotated transcript is available for reference during the discussion — use it to find specific moments and quotes, but it is not a substitute for watching the film.
Please complete the preparation conversation below before class. This is part of attendance for today's meeting.
Preparation Discussion
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Today's Plan
Today you'll discuss the AlphaGo documentary in four rounds, each with a different partner and a different question. After each round, we'll hear from a few pairs before moving on.
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Log InRound 1: Creativity
This activity involves working with a partner.
Can AI Be Creative?
Move 37 was described as a move "no human would ever play" — yet it won the game. AlphaGo wasn't following strategies humans developed; it found something genuinely novel. But it had no intention, no aesthetic sense, no understanding of what it did.
Discuss with your partner: Is finding an original, effective solution without understanding or intention "creativity"? What does your answer imply for AI-generated art, music, and writing — are those creative acts?
You can reference the annotated transcript for specific quotes and moments.
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Round 1: Share Out
Share Out
Geoff will ask a few pairs to share what they discussed. Listen for ideas that challenge or extend your own thinking.
Round 2: Anthropomorphization
This activity involves working with a partner.
Why Do We Treat AI Like a Person?
Throughout the documentary, commentators call AlphaGo "he" and "she." Fan Hui says it "showed him something." Even Julian Schrittwieser — one of the programmers — calls it "a very, very simple program" yet still slips into treating it as an agent with desires and personality.
Discuss with your partner: Why do humans project personality onto AI systems? Think about your own experience with ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI tools — do you catch yourself doing this? What are the consequences when we anthropomorphize AI?
You can reference the annotated transcript for specific quotes and moments.
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Round 2: Share Out
Share Out
Geoff will ask a few pairs to share what they discussed. Listen for ideas that challenge or extend your own thinking.
Round 3: The Mirror
This activity involves working with a partner.
What Does AI Reveal About Us?
Fan Hui describes playing AlphaGo as looking in a "mirror" — being "naked" because the AI has no personality, no emotions, no style to read. Players are left entirely alone with their own thinking. Meanwhile, AlphaGo's "slack moves" revealed that human Go players had been confusing "winning by a lot" with "winning safely" for centuries.
Discuss with your partner: How does interacting with AI expose assumptions and blind spots in human thinking? Have you experienced this with AI tools — moments where AI revealed something about how you think or what you take for granted?
You can reference the annotated transcript for specific quotes and moments.
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Round 3: Share Out
Share Out
Geoff will ask a few pairs to share what they discussed. Listen for ideas that challenge or extend your own thinking.
Round 4: Collaboration
This activity involves working with a partner.
Are Humans and AI Better Together?
Move 37 showed AI finding what humans couldn't. Move 78 showed Lee Sedol finding what AI couldn't. After losing to Deep Blue, Kasparov proposed "centaur chess" — humans and AI playing together — and found that "a weak human + machine + better process" beat "a strong human + machine + inferior process." Fan Hui went from devastation to using AlphaGo to become a stronger player. And despite AI now being unbeatable at both chess and Go, interest in both games has increased — professional Go players actually got better and more creative after AlphaGo, with 60% of the improvement coming from moves that deviated from AI suggestions.
But Cory Doctorow warns about the flip side: instead of humans being augmented by AI (centaurs), workers can end up as "reverse centaurs" — humans serving as appendages to machines rather than the other way around.
Discuss with your partner: What does this suggest about the future of human-AI collaboration? When does AI make humans better (like Go players after AlphaGo), and when does it make them into reverse centaurs? In your own life, where have you found AI most useful as a collaborator vs. most frustrating?
You can reference the annotated transcript for specific quotes and moments.
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Round 4: Share Out
Share Out
Geoff will ask a few pairs to share what they discussed. Listen for ideas that challenge or extend your own thinking.
Wrap-Up
Closing Reflection
Four questions, four partners, many perspectives. The AlphaGo story isn't just about Go — it's about what happens when humans encounter a machine that challenges our understanding of intelligence, creativity, and our own thinking.
The themes from today — creativity without intention, anthropomorphism, the mirror effect, human-AI collaboration — will keep coming back throughout this course. Pay attention to when they show up in your own interactions with AI.