Opening strategies in the game of go from feudalism to superhuman AI
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6146097 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bret Beheim (0000-0003-4653-3155, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Pages | e28-e28 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Evolutionary Human Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2513-843X • E-ISSN: 2513-843X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/ehs.2025.10016 |
| PMID | 41089410 |
| OpenAlex | W4413654588 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 44 |
How does information infrastructure shape long-term cultural evolution? Using over four centuries of professional game records from the game of Go, this study explores how strategic dynamics in opening moves reflect historical shifts in the ‘infostructure’ of skilled Go players. Drawing from recent work on how population size, AI, and information technology affect cultural evolution and innovation dynamics, I analyze over 118,000 games using measures of cultural diversity, divergence, and player network composition. The results show distinct eras of collective innovation and homogenization, including an early 20th-century explosion of novel opening strategies, a Cold-War-era die-off, and a recent increase in evolutionary tempo with the arrival of the internet and superhuman AI programmes like AlphaGo. Player population size shows an inverse-U relationship with opening move diversity, and a recent decline in strategic diversity has accompanied a shift in the player network, from many small subgroups to a few large ones. Surprisingly, the influence of AI has produced only a modest, short-lived disruption in the distribution of opening moves, suggesting convergence between humans and AI and incremental rather than revolutionary cultural change
Feudalism · Political science · Politics · Artificial Intelligence in Games · Digital Games and Media · History · Law · Psychology
Strategic social learning and the population dynamics of human behavior
Risk Sharing and Transactions Costs
Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge
Prestige-biased social learning
Entropy and diversity
Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities
Diversity and Evenness
Invention in the city
Finding community structure in very large networks
Dilution of expertise in the rise and fall of collective innovation
The role of population size in folk tune complexity
Maintaining Transient Diversity Is a General Principle for Improving Collective Problem Solving
The Digital Provide
Revisiting the Effect of Population Size on Cumulative Cultural Evolution
Why cultural distance can promote – or impede – group-beneficial outcomes
Entropy trade-offs in artistic design
Population Size and Rates of Language Change
Railroads of the Raj
Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find
Machine culture
Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa
Demography and Cultural Evolution
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |