The development of computer programs that can beat humans at games has a long history — from the mastery of noughts and crosses in the 1950s to Deep Blue’s celebrated defeat of world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

In recent years, however, the pace of advance has quickened. Data-crunching devices routinely notch up previously unthinkable victories. Computers can triumph in quiz games, as IBM’s Watson proved when it won the TV show Jeopardy in 2011. They also mimic human aptitudes with ever greater facility. For instance, machines play arcade games simply by observing the movement of objects on the screen.

Even so, the triumph of the AlphaGo computer over the South Korean world champion Lee Se-dol in the first of a five-match series in the ancient Chinese board game of Go marks more than just a new notch on the computerised honours board. Mr Lee had been confident of victory and proclaimed himself “shocked” by his defeat.