Weiqi: Tradition and Transformation

This session is free.
Registration (with $10 refundable deposit) required.
Click here to register


One of the world’s oldest strategy games, weiqi (known as go in Japan and baduk in Korea), is played by millions of people around the world. This half-day programme features talks by Nam Chihyung and Michael Redmond, followed by a book launch and talk for The Go Code: Ancient Intelligence in the Age of AI by Benjamin Yang. These talks will explore the history of go, its development in East Asia, and its future in the era of artificial intelligence.

The Golden Age of Go: Innovations in Edo Japan

This talk examines the development of go in Japan, focusing on the Edo period (1603–1868), when the game was transformed from an elite pastime into a highly structured cultural and intellectual discipline. Although go originated in China and reached Japan via the Korean peninsula, it was under Tokugawa rule that its distinctive institutions took shape.

The establishment of the four official go houses, the emergence of professional ranks, and the system of castle games helped raise the level of play while shaping enduring ideals of skill, ethics, and pedagogy. Through figures such as Hon’inbō Dōsaku, Michael Redmond considers how Edo-period innovations laid the foundations of modern professional go, and why this period was central to the game’s history.

About the speaker


Michael Redmond is a pioneering figure in Western go and the first Western player to qualify as a professional through the Nihon Ki-in. He moved to Japan as a teenager to study go, entered the insei system in 1977, and qualified as a professional in 1981, later attaining the highest rank of 9-dan.
Beyond his playing career, Redmond is widely known as the English-language commentator for the 2016 AlphaGo–Lee Sedol match and has played a key role in introducing professional go culture to international audiences.

Go in the AI Era: Thinking, Not Learning

As artificial intelligence increasingly takes on tasks of calculation, pattern recognition, and optimisation, this talk argues that the greater challenge lies in preserving and training human capacities for judgment, reflection, and independent thought. Go offers a powerful model for cultivating these skills.

Unlike knowledge-based education, go cannot be mastered through memorisation. Each move depends on context, uncertainty, and interaction with an opponent, forcing players to evaluate risks and make decisions without complete information. In an era of outsourced cognition and instant solutions, the game provides a rare opportunity to think deeply, autonomously, and under pressure.

About the speaker


Nam Chihyung became a professional go player at the age of 15 through the Korea Baduk Association’s first Women’s Professional Qualification Tournament and retired from competition in 2020. Since 2003, she has taught at Myongji University, where she is a professor in the Department of Baduk Studies. She has published widely in both English and Korean on the topic of go.
In 2023, she served as head coach of the Korean national go team at the Hangzhou Asian Para Games, where the team won two gold medals and one bronze. She later organised the first International ParaGo Tournament in Korea and was involved in founding the International ParaGo Federation, where she serves as Secretary-General.


About the moderator


James Lee Xinqiang was the first amateur player in Southeast Asia to be certified 7-dan. He was elected President of the Singapore Weiqi Association in August 2025 and is a key lecturer for the National Youth Team.
Lee trains over 200 players every weekend through the Singapore Weiqi Association and also teaches go to primary and secondary school students across Singapore. In 2023, he was appointed Team Leader for Team Singapore (Weiqi) at the 19th Hangzhou Asian Games.

Book launch and talk

The Go Code: Ancient Intelligence in the Age of AI

*This session will be conducted in Mandarin


This book explores go as part of an intellectual system that emerged in China during the Shang–Zhou period and later spread across Japan, Korea, and parts of Southeast Asia. Drawing on history, cultural philosophy, and technological inquiry, it presents go not simply as a board game, but as an abstract language of strategy and reasoning that shaped shared ways of thinking across East Asia.

The rise of artificial intelligence has challenged this inherited framework in unexpected ways. Through the example of AlphaGo, the talk explores why Go became a critical site of encounter between humans and AI, what this confrontation reveals about the limits of human cognition, and how long-standing ideas about intelligence and order may need to be rethought today.


About the speaker


Benjamin Yang has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for many years. His professional experience spans broadcasting, research, and university teaching, including appointments at Central South University and Hainan University, where his work focused on philosophy and dramaturgy.

Yang has published more than twenty academic papers and is the author of several major books, including The Cat in the Closed Chamber: The Concept of Time and Space and the Collective Subconscious, Drama and the Rise of Great Powers, and Towards Agamemnon: Totalitarianism Origins & History. His research brings together philosophy, history, politics, literature, and theatre across both Eastern and Western traditions.


^{Image: Doctor Huatuo Attending to Guan Yu's Wound. Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861). Japan, Edo period, 1853. Woodblock print. Asian Civilisations Museum}

This talk is organised in conjunction with