Hype is hype, whether it turns out to be justified or not. Not all people can beat even a trivial Go program.
You may be missing my larger point. It is not about whether humans can beat the best chess or Go computers. It is about a very strong bias in favor of algorithms in general. The dynamics around human vs computer chess matches simply demonstrated this bias in an easily percievable form. Who cared about Kasparov's later victories and draws against other state of the art programs? They received very little coverage.
Chess is just a game. The important thing to consider is what will happen when algorithms start to competre with people in more complex and ambiguous areas.
I understand your larger point, but that's just how news works: you report on the new stuff, not the old stuff. Humans beating computers at chess was old news when Deep Blue happened, so it wasn't worth reporting when that happened. Nobody talks about computers beating humans at chess anymore, because that's old news now. It would be (really big) news again if a human started beating the best chess computers again.
It is old news for humans to beat computers at Go, but the reverse is still new news.
I agree with you that people who infer an impending AI takeover of the world from computer success in specific games are just being silly.
You may be missing my larger point. It is not about whether humans can beat the best chess or Go computers. It is about a very strong bias in favor of algorithms in general. The dynamics around human vs computer chess matches simply demonstrated this bias in an easily percievable form. Who cared about Kasparov's later victories and draws against other state of the art programs? They received very little coverage.
Chess is just a game. The important thing to consider is what will happen when algorithms start to competre with people in more complex and ambiguous areas.