It is interesting how fast this has happened compared to chess.
In 1978 chess IM David Levy won a 6 match series 4.5-1.5 - he was better than the machine, but the machine gave him a good game (the game he lost was when he tried to take it on in a tactical game, where the machine proved stronger). It took until 1996/7 for computers to match and surpass the human world champion.
I'd say the difference was that for chess, the algorithm was known (minimax + alpha-beta search) and it was computing power that was lacking - we had to wait for Moore's law to do its work. For go, the algorithm (MCTS + good neural nets + reinforcement learning) was lacking, but the computing power was already available.
In 1978 chess IM David Levy won a 6 match series 4.5-1.5 - he was better than the machine, but the machine gave him a good game (the game he lost was when he tried to take it on in a tactical game, where the machine proved stronger). It took until 1996/7 for computers to match and surpass the human world champion.
I'd say the difference was that for chess, the algorithm was known (minimax + alpha-beta search) and it was computing power that was lacking - we had to wait for Moore's law to do its work. For go, the algorithm (MCTS + good neural nets + reinforcement learning) was lacking, but the computing power was already available.