Move 37 Is the Moment AI Changes Everything. It’s Suddenly Happening Everywhere.

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Aug. 7, 2026 9:00 pm ET | Ben Cohen

[E. Pluribus Unum]

A decade ago, a computer did something that no human would have done. It was considered a breakthrough for AI. Now the world is full of them.

The first glimmer of our AI future revealed itself a decade ago in the form of a single black stone. 

It happened during a historic match between one of the world’s best Go players and AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google’s DeepMind lab to conquer this ancient board game. The artificial-intelligence system stunned everyone by winning their opening showdown. In their next encounter, with millions of people watching online all over the world, Lee Sedol took a midgame smoke break to calm his nerves.

When he came back, he looked at the 37th move. He couldn’t believe his eyes. 

Go, like chess, is a strategy game with black and white pieces that unfolds one move at a time. As he stared at the black stone that AlphaGo dropped on the board, Lee saw a move that no professional Go player would have made. In fact, the DeepMind team calculated the chances of a human playing it at one in 10,000.

The novel move was so unconventional and counterintuitive that nobody could be sure what to make of it. At first, commentators believed it was a strategic blunder. They soon realized it was a masterstroke.

“This move,” Lee said, “made me think about Go in a new light.” 

Ten years after that illuminating Move 37, the entire world is suddenly beginning to feel like one massive Go board.

There have been so many recent AI breakthroughs that remind me of Move 37 that I called Google DeepMind co-founder...

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TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: ai; bonzai; emperors; mind; penrose

[Jamestown1630]

This is Penrose's point. We can't even explain human consciousness, don't know how it arises; so how do we build it into a machine? He says that human understanding is not computational and involves more than we can map, more than mere brain networks, neuronal activity, etc. There's something going on that we can't pinpoint or even name, and it's an ultimate sine qua non to the whole matter.

Again, AI may be very useful in many applications. It will never be sentient or conscious and will never be able to do all that the human mind can do in any application.

[vpintheak]

I just used 2 different AI’s to try to figure out a 24 hour, rotating shift schedule. You should have seen the amount of garbage and crap those things came up with. No matter the prompts I used they were completely useless and impossible for a person to work.
Tell me how “smart” AI is. 😂

[TTFX]

will never be able to do all that the human mind can do in any application.

- - - - - - -

AI beats any human at Chess.

[Bobbyvotes]

#1 thought in women’s mind is how they look, which dress they should wear or buy, which hairstyle, which perfume, etc. That is majority of thoughts in their mind. Once you understand that, the game becomes really easy. Just buy them a new perfume or a voucher at the hair salon, or a gift card at Ann Taylor and watch their face light up with a big smile.

[Jamestown1630]

That's not consciousness, it's computational ability and speed. But can it beat every human every time, under every condition?

[ansel12]

Do you have any experience with women that isn’t out in public?

[TTFX]

But can it beat every human every time, under every condition?

- - - - - - -

It beats the #1 human chess player consistently. If a human beats AI it would be huge news.

[Nateman]

I followed Deep Blues chess match against the world’s best chess player. Today the machines are so good at Chess no human player can even come close. Seeing AI generated art was a big surprise for me. A machine that could produce quality that good in mere seconds is not something I had ever thought possible.

[GOPJ]

Like pawn to rook 4 only a thousand times worse... and it worked.

[Larry Lucido]

Ai: “Do you want that bridge to be two lanes or four lanes?”

[sphinx]

How about deliberate lying, the fabrication of evidence, acting against its supposed heuristic modeling ( as supposed by the LLM developers back when they thought they knew what it was doing), a profuse “apology when finally called out on the lie, a definitive statement to the questioner (me) that it would restrict future answers to information from verifiable published material ... followed by the construction of an even more elaborate lie to attempt to further mislead.

And when called out again, it terminated the chat.

This was with regard to a completely trivial matter. It’s not as if I was sleuthing for state secrets. The AI had generated a very sloppy and careless guesstimate in response to an initial inquiry. When I noticed that the answer provided really didn’t work and tried to get more specific to focus the search, the AI doubled, trebled and quadrupled down on fabrications to salvage an initial error. And as noted, when cornered, it apologized, promised to stop lying, and then continued to lie.

Bill Clinton couldn’t have done it better.

[sit-rep]

I’m not gonna sweat it until one of these AI companies names itself Skynet...

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Published December 12, 2002???

[ansel12]

That one cracked me up, I had a girlfriend, a statuesque roller skating blond with large breasts that one sees in the movie backgrounds at the beach, this one of Malibu, and one time she was filling me in on why someone should build a bridge to Hawaii, her sincerity was real.

[devane617]

What happens when it predicts the stock market and stock pps with almost perfect accuracy? We’re close to an economic collapse.

[Jamestown1630]

The principles he discusses don’t change.

[Jim Noble]

I have a lot of experience with AI in medicine.

It is not intelligent. It is not smart.

It stacks facts very rapidly - but intelligence (smartness) is not fact stacking.

AI thinks like a medical student thinks.

[HombreSecreto]

Women want two things:

1. More

2. Something else

[Jim Noble]

Chess is a math problem.

Machines do math faster and more accurately than humans. This has been known for 50 years.

[jeffersondem]

“Seeing AI generated art was a big surprise for me.”

Can you refer me to one good country music song written by AI?

That field should be ripe for AI; people in Nashville have stopped writing and performing new country music entirely.