Go: Is the portable old man the nine-time champion?

Chapter 436 Unrivaled Under Heaven
"Why aren't you happy after winning the championship?"

On the plane, Jiang Mobai, who was browsing the news with a newspaper, fell silent for a moment when he heard Yi Zheng's sudden remark.

In the just-concluded Lunar New Year match, Jiang Mobai won three consecutive games and took the championship, which should indeed be a cause for celebration.

Although it was only an invitational tournament, the prize money was higher than that of a regular national commercial tournament, and the schedule was quite tight, so it didn't take up too much time.

But in reality, Jiang Mobai didn't feel happy at all.

The reason is simple: whether it's the heated discussions on the internet or the reports from various media outlets, almost all of them are talking about the same thing: how Yi Zheng "broke down Li Junhe's defenses" in the research lab.

The overwhelming number of articles are all asking:
Just how strong is Yi Zheng?

Who is stronger, Yi Zheng or AlphaGo?

As for him, the official champion? There wasn't a single serious mention of him from beginning to end—no, it wasn't entirely silent. In the corner of one report, there was indeed a sentence: "Li Junhe was in extremely poor form during this competition, and Jiang Mobai 9-dan won the championship."

!!!

You might as well not have reported this at all! It's as if I just stumbled upon the championship by chance!
It's easy to imagine that, for many years to come, when this match is mentioned, the first thing people will think of will not be who won the match, but Yi Zheng's fourth match against Li Junhe.

Defeating Lee Jun-hyuk is no easy feat! Do you think it's simple?

……

Jiang Mobai was internally screaming when he saw Yi Zheng sitting next to him playing on his phone. He gritted his teeth and swallowed back the words he wanted to shout.

Nothing in this world is simple, except...

Ugh!
The legend has finally come to an end, taking not only the glorious era with it, but also taking all of them with it.

Jiang Mobai fell silent for a moment, and in that silence, the plane landed smoothly at the Capital Airport.

“They called me last night and said there was something I needed to go back to deal with, but I don’t know what it is.”

After the plane came to a stop, Yi Zheng stood up as he spoke, pulled up his pants, picked up his backpack, and prepared to disembark. One of the advantages of flying business class is that you can leave the cabin first.

Jiang Mobai was taken aback upon hearing this, as he had not heard of any urgent matter. But then he thought that, given Yi Zheng's current status as the world's number one and top-tier Go player, there must be a large number of sponsors lining up to sign him as a spokesperson or invite him to participate in various commercial activities.

Now I've even heard that the national team is planning to use him as the core of a "promotional package"—for example, having Yi Zheng as a spokesperson, and then "bonus" two other champions, creating a marketing campaign like "The Four Heavenly Kings of Youth Drinking Milk".

For any sport, sponsors are undoubtedly the most important source of funding. Even in the world's top events, no organization dares to claim that it has no shortage of sponsors or abundant funds.

"They're probably trying to get you to be their spokesperson again."

"No, I heard it's from Kinoko Company, it's probably about artificial intelligence."

Ever since returning from the AI ​​lab, Professor Ke had been constantly talking about when AI would be officially launched, to the point that Yi Zheng was practically sick of hearing it. This time, however, he felt that a formal competition might really be on the horizon. After all, since their last participation in the testing, Muye Fox Company had been acquiring a large number of chess records from various countries, clearly for the purpose of training the AI.

The Go industry in this world is quite well-regulated, with excellent protection not only for the copyrights of Go players, but also for the game records, which are protected by strict copyright laws.

In comparison, the Go Association of the world under Ke Laoshi has always been a very makeshift organization, especially the copyright of Go game records, which is a mess, or rather, there is no copyright protection at all.

Or rather, any work, including game records, such as the importance attached to competition-related data, is completely inadequate, or even completely lacking in statistical work. They can't even create an official website, and when they finally manage to create one, it is suspended for who knows how long.

Even the materials and data held by the Go Association may not be as abundant as those held by individual enthusiasts' statistical websites, which is ironic in a way for the so-called official body.

They cannot coordinate the overall situation internally, nor can they protect rights and interests externally.

Most professional Go players have no idea how many wins or losses they have in their careers. It's even more absurd that leading figures in Chinese Go history don't know how many official games they've played, not to mention the fact that in this world, players with hundreds or thousands of wins receive honorary trophies.

Although many of them are just glass trophies that can be customized for a few dollars on Taobao, they are still honors that enhance the players' sense of belonging.

If a person doesn't even have a sense of belonging to an organization or a cause, then no matter how much other work they do, it will probably be in vain.

However, regarding the company's purchase of game records, just as Mr. Ke said, buy! Buy a lot! The more you buy, the more polluting the database becomes! That means your strength is lacking!

According to Professor Ke, human chess records are pure pollution for artificial intelligence.

The training methods of the second-generation dog were already very effective, but because Master brought a small number of human chess records, it could not beat Zero, who did not bring any humans.

Using the same training method, but with the same "contaminated" data, a significant performance gap emerged between the two.

What's the use of artificial intelligence?

Jiang Mobai couldn't help but roll his eyes when he heard this, after all, the artificial intelligence he faced last time was beyond weak.

This kind of training using human chess records is only within the human framework; it's merely imitating others' moves, so how could it possibly surpass humans?
However, in a sense, Go game records can indeed be considered the "secret manuals" of the Go world, especially those famous games involving complex life-and-death problems, which were kept secret in ancient times.

Over a hundred years ago, these things were firmly monopolized by chess academies and families. You couldn't learn them even if you wanted to, so playing chess with them inherently created an unfair advantage in terms of resources.

Even during the so-called four great families period in Japan, there were underhanded tactics such as marrying off daughters to steal chess scores and life-and-death problems.

However, in modern times, with the increasing standardization of professional competitions, although copyright is still important in business, chess scores are widely disseminated among the general public, and knowledge is no longer monopolized by a few.

This is why Go techniques have seen explosive progress in modern times – the openness and sharing of knowledge is one of the major driving forces.

After all, intelligence is something that cannot be inherited.

(End of this chapter)