I don’t disagree with the author, I just think their argument isn’t as strong as it could be. Excelling in a constrained decision space like go is fundamentally less difficult than doing the same in the real world. It’s a categorical difference that the author didn’t mention.

I’m also not even convinced move 37 was properly explained as a “straight A student” behavior. AlphaGo did bootstrap by studying human games but it also learned more fundamental value functions via self play.