Go grandmaster Shin defeats AI KataGo with a two-stone handicap

Shin Jin-seo, the world's top-ranked Go player, on Tuesday completed a dramatic comeback against the world’s premier artificial intelligence Go engine, KataGo, claiming a historic human victory over AI. Shin, who holds the game's highest achievable rank of nine-dan, dealt KataGo a decisive 11.5-point defeat playing black in 221 moves in the series finale, which took three hours and five minutes. The 26-year-old South Korean grandmaster became the first human to win an official series against a state-of-the-art Go engine under a two-stone handicap, a margin considered the absolute boundary for human competition against modern AI. “I believe this series holds immense significance because it clearly demonstrated that humans can still hold their own against AI,” Shin told reporters after the match. “Early on, I simply copied AI moves, which led to heavy fighting and frequent, easy losses.