10 years after AlphaGo, Lee Sedol meets AI again — but not to fight
Lee Sedol answers questions during a press briefing held to mark his appointment as a special invited professor in mechanical engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) on April 11, 2025. Courtesy of UNIST
Former Go champion Lee Sedol will meet artificial intelligence (AI) again on Monday, nearly a decade after his landmark match against Google’s AlphaGo.
This time, however, the encounter will focus less on a human-vs-machine showdown and more on collaboration. Lee will work with an agentic AI to create a Go game model together, the event organizer said Tuesday.
The event will be held at Ara Hall in the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul — the same venue where Lee faced off against AlphaGo in 2016 in what was widely described as the “match of the century.”
Enhans, a startup developing agentic AI systems, said it is organizing the campaign to demonstrate the commercial potential of the technology.
Agentic AI refers to systems that go beyond generative AI by setting goals, planning steps and executing tasks autonomously using digital tools.
During the demonstration, Lee will interact with Enhans’s AI agent through voice commands to create a Go game model in real time and play a match using it.
The company said the event is intended to show how AI, once seen primarily as a competitor to humans, can function as a creative collaborator.
Global technology companies, including Anthropic, Nvidia and Microsoft, are sponsoring the campaign, which will be broadcast live worldwide.
“Ten years ago, AI shocked the world at this very place,” said Lee Seung-hyun, CEO of Enhans. “It is meaningful we are able to demonstrate how AI has now evolved to a partner that realizes human intent and expands creativity.”
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.