Humans tend to improve in most, if not all, endeavors. We call that “progress.” In sports, it has been driven by better nutrition, training methods, and advances in exercise physiology and biomechanics. In games like chess and go, it has been driven by people thinking outside the box (e.g., hypermodernism in chess and “cosmic go”). Sometimes these innovations are not even better in their own right, but they spur others to think outside the box.
In the world at large, great innovations have come from the insights of geniuses, observers who noticed the significance of an accident (X-rays, penicillin), and systematic, experimental exploration of a known idea (Edison, the Wright brothers). In modern times, the innovations have come more from systematic exploration than from the inspiration of geniuses, I think.
AI-powered go is just one more example in this parade or progress.
