Shogi AI rates a classic "good for White" line at +800, upending decades of human opening theory
i_dg23 · x · 2026-10-07
A shogi AI developer reflects on how AI changed the discipline: before shogi engines, opening move quality was often unknowable, and pros spent hours or years forming their own conclusions. A famous line marked "good for White (second player)" in the classic book Habu's Brain now evaluates at +800 for the first player — proof of how unreliable human opening intuition was.
His key point: this isn't just a convenient tool — the rational allocation of time itself has changed. Spending hours pondering one position is now arguably pointless when an AI answers faster and more accurately.
He extends the analogy to math: if a sufficiently strong math AI returns proofs or counterexamples in minutes for problems humans couldn't crack in years, devoting a lifetime to an open problem may become a punchline.
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