Lee Se-dol to hold AI rematch in Seoul

Ten years after his historic match against Google DeepMind’s Go artificial intelligence AlphaGo, Lee Se-dol, a ninth-dan professional Go player, will return to the same venue to face AI once again. This time, Lee will build his own AI-powered Go model and compete against it.

Agentic AI startup Enhance said it will hold a global AI campaign featuring Lee and a Go match on March 9 at the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul in Jongno-gu. The event will take place at the same site where Lee faced AlphaGo from March 9 to 15, 2016. AlphaGo defeated Lee four games to one, an outcome that stunned the world. Lee secured his only victory in the fourth game with what came to be known as the “divine move,” move 78, preserving human pride. He remains the only human Go player to have defeated AlphaGo.

The March 9 match will be held from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. During the 30-minute event, Lee will communicate by voice with Enhance’s AI agent while building his Go game in real time. With the agent’s assistance, he will also construct the Go model that will compete against him. He will then play a match against the model he created. Through this process, the company said it intends to demonstrate how an AI agent can carry out the full workflow, from planning and execution to generation and operation, using voice commands alone.

After retiring from professional Go in 2019, Lee was appointed last year as a special professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. He has since conducted research combining AI and Go and has provided AI-related advisory services and lectures.

The event will be officially sponsored by global technology companies including Microsoft, which supports the Azure cloud platform, Anthropic and Nvidia. It will be broadcast live worldwide. An Enhance official said the event is designed to symbolically show how AI, once known for competing against humans with overwhelming performance, has evolved into a partner that executes and creates under human direction.

Founded in 2021, Enhance develops AI operating system solutions. CEO Lee Seung-hyun said it is especially meaningful to demonstrate at the same venue where AI astonished humanity a decade ago that the technology has evolved into a partner that supports human intent and enhances creativity.


전혜진 sunrise@donga.com