The technological drama of AI

Introduced in 2016 as a watershed moment in AI development, the announcement of AlphaGo – the first AI system to beat a human professional in the board game of go – garnered a range of mass publicity, and this media coverage often forms the core of scholarly analysis, too. Drawing on a novel dataset of online discussions by professional and amateur players from 2016-2020 which covers the introduction and retirement of AlphaGo, as well as the construction of alternative systems, I outline a new perspective of the impact of the system on the playing community. Moving beyond recognition of audience-centric responses of enchantment/disenchantment by these players, I articulate a process of engagement through which meaning-making and reconstruction occurred within the go community. These findings emphasize the importance of including multiple perspectives in analysis and draws attention to the influence of impacted constituencies in AI construction.