Is it overstating to say that AI is on a par with the invention of fire, electricity, flight, or the Internet in its ability to transform our lives?

Well, they get knocked down, but they get up again. You are never gonna keep them down. Checkmated yes, down, no.

Yes.

You Go players were pissing your pants laughing at the chess boys, weren’t you? “Ultimate test of cerebral fitness my arse” you were saying, weren’t you? Until somebody had the bright idea of using a Monte Carlo Tree and then pairing it up with deep learning to kick your cock-of-the-walk squarely in his knackers in 2017.

If everyone in Russia dropped into holes in the ground only never to return, would that be good for NATO and international peacekeepers? Can we convince Russians to be less diabolical, so they coexist? Does Putin stink like doo doo in the commode?

I blame the EU. Ursula von der Linesearch.

But for the rest of us, bugger all important, really. In fact where AI has been deployed it’s generally made things worse as it’s just as stupid as people but much, much quicker at being completely boneheaded.

Unless you play Chess. Then it has rendered your whole devotion to shoving carved bits of wood about sixty-four squares in a very skillful way utterly pointless. No honestly. Not even Carlsen (2830) could beat a top chess machine at full whack. I can’t beat one running at half steam.

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So for the Chess and Go boys, it certainly has transformed their lives, yes. From being feted kings, they now sit in the back of the tavern, drinking a whisky drink, drinking a vodka drink, drinking a lager drink, drinking a cider drink, and singing songs that remind them of the good times, singing songs that remind them of the better times (oh Zugzwang ploy, Zugzwang ploy).