i see the discussions here lately are about software programs for after-game analysis how does one feel about all that extra tech help in playing this game – do you feel pro or con about it ? showing the right moves and what to do next hummmmm, thought go was a game of human mind over matter? and not software analysis and whos got the best program running on a different platform – maybe i just old school but i guess all things change – look what happened to chess lately and the slide form tradiional playing some things are good for the game somethings are bad — how you feel about it ? Interested in hearing your options
The difference between go and chess is that go has more depth, so AI doesn’t completely take over. There’s still a lot of human interpretation required to understand moves. AI definitely had some negative effects on Go, but at least slightly more benefits overall.
Most of the influx of “software aids” you see on the forums are probably software developers aiming to make a quick buck off of all the new AI tools, it doesn’t necessarily reflect Go players or community as a whole.
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AI tools are that. Tools. They can help you to improve, but can be counterproductive too if you don’t know how to use it and when. Unlike chess, there are not only 1 to 3 movements on an specific position, in Go could be 20+ possible moves each one deriving to infinite number of different games, positions and strategies. Sum that you can’t follow blindly AI suggestions because some AI moves makes sense because AI can read the game until the end, and know about which fights can win, or create a 4 stones group that 30movements later will sacrifice, because he get stronger in sente and win 2 points in exchange, and so on…
Conclusion: AI in Go can’t be compared to AI at chess due to “simplicity” of chess. What you see as next move in AI under an specific position needs a complete understanding about whats happening and the idea behind. Is not just put there and it’s done.
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Great input by all, some fair,r some very understanding dialogue of the problems and benefits also and the comparison to what has happened to chess, where it seems lately more ppeoplesend countless hours figuring ways to disguise their use of AI than actually learning or even playing the game – but then again, to each his own i suppose any one esle to comment please i wait with baoted breath
I told flux-2-flex to “add AI slop about Go game” to this image. Instead of changing the image, flux-2-flex suddenly wrote that text on it:
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Yeah, that’s what I‘d call “muddying the water” 
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Is this unsolicited slop?
In any case I feel computer evaluations of Go positions are not the same as computer generated text purporting to express ideas that aren’t there.
Yes.
Perhaps it is unfortunate how much is being lumped under the title “AI”.
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As a SDK, I once got some 90+ percentage of win rate against 5 dan in 60 moves, since I had some researches with ai about some places of the opening, but that did not help me from resigning after another 30 moves.
Without your own understanding, ai ususally gives you a good head-start, rather than granting you a win. And it can be toxic sometimes if you do not get the subsequent moves right.
My criteria is, if you do not understand it, do not stick to it. Play you own Go.
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Yes, this, and even worse are images and music created by stealing from real human artists, while shamelessly making a huge ecological footprint.
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good comments by all the points you made where exactly the same as i have – ai steals creativity at least human creativity a.i. thinking is something esle maybe in 20 years it will be but then i won’t be here to see that so i think not what i can’t experience
AI doesn’t really have any ecological impacts beyond those of any other large industry. See this article about ai water use - people seem to talk about data center water use a lot, but even if you count indirect water use from the power plants supplying them with electricity, all US data centers (not just ai) account for only 0.2% of the nation’s freshwater use.
You are using water (and other natural resources) right now to read the ogs forums, but the amount is negligible compared to how much water was used to produce your food. ogs itself has some ecological footprint. Any use of computers will consume water, copper, rare earth elements, etc. I think we’re still better off with the internet than without.
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LOL, who is Andy Masley, why should I need to know who he is – and why should I put trust in anything he says? Is he an environmental expert? A natural scientist?
But have you even read the article you linked to?
He writes:
This post is not at all about other issues related to AI, especially the very real problems with electricity use.
I didn’t even mention water use, I wrote “ecological footprint”.
BUT water DOES actually play a role, see further below in the UNEP (and other) sources.
Data centers are so much more efficient with their water that they generate 50x as much tax revenue per unit of water used than golf courses in the county:
[…]
So even though data centers are using 30x less water than golf courses, they bring in more total tax revenue: […]
Oh, whataboutism also, now it is about golf courses, and how data centers bring more tax revenue than golf courses 
well, I never said that golf courses were environment-friendly 
Some sources – of course I haven’t read them all but only browsed superficially, and many of these also show ways out of the problem.
Wikipedia:
The Guardian:
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS):
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE):
UNEP (UN environment programme):
AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.
https://wedocs.unep.org/items/5f3afe87-5419-439b-a6ee-14240b2605e9
(mentions water!)
GreenPeace: “Environmental Impacts of Artificial Intelligence”
Cornell University:
More critically, the global AI demand is projected to account for 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of 4-6 Denmark or half of the United Kingdom. This is concerning, as freshwater scarcity has become one of the most pressing challenges.
So, whatever Andy Masley may assert, even the water usage issue of AI data centers is NOT a “fake” problem. It is complicated, yes, and it also depends on where those centers are, but overall the environmental footprint of AI is MUCH more than simply the use of water.
And note that I am not indiscriminately against the use of AI – AI in medicine and science can be a great tool, and in Go it has helped us understand a lot more than we previously did (well, not me, TBH, as you can see from my rank graph 
), and most of my criticism is directed at thoughtless use of AI for creating “AI slop”, i.e. …
And I guess I should also add “thoughtless use of LLMs”.
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Probably anything driven by corporate greed is bad for the environment. That’s what I understood from his comment. Shaming AI companies for leaving a huge ecological footprint would likely fall on deaf ears as a result of that – if corporations in other industries (such as food) don’t listen, why would AI companies? I can understand where you’re coming from as well.
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I have friends who are under threat of having their land seized by the power company, with government backing, so that a strip of beautiful forest can be cut down, and giant power lines run right through it, for the sole purpose of powering data centers hundreds of miles away. It makes me sick just to think about it.
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ME TOO !-when outer space has sunlight for power, these things and cooling needed from the freezing outside in space – and we are spending billions to see what the other side of the moon looks like ——-again—- come one nasa start using those Musk satellites for this shit.
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it doesn’t work like that
claude-opus-4-5-20251101-thinking-32k
This is a common misconception! Space actually presents significant cooling challenges, not advantages.
The problem:
Space is a near-vacuum, which means:
- No convection – no air to carry heat away
- No conduction – nothing to transfer heat into
- Only radiation – the slowest method of heat transfer
So your datacenter would essentially be wrapped in a perfect insulating blanket.
What actually happens:
- Heat from servers builds up with no easy escape
- If in sunlight, you’re also absorbing solar radiation (~1,400 W/m²)
- You’d need massive radiator panels to emit heat as infrared radiation
The ISS, for example, has huge radiator arrays just to handle heat from relatively modest equipment and crew body heat.
For a datacenter:
You’d need radiator surface area potentially larger than the datacenter itself, plus systems to pump heat from components to those radiators.
The counterintuitive reality:
Keeping things cool enough in space is hard, but so is keeping things warm enough when in Earth’s shadow. Thermal management in space is a major engineering challenge, not a freebie.
So unfortunately, no—a space datacenter wouldn’t just passively cool itself.