When as a human player, you learn to play go, there are a number of concepts you have to grasp. It starts with understanding when how a group of stones can be captured. Next you have to learn when a group of stones is dead or alive. And there are all sorts of complexities in this (like ko-fights). And the next thing you have to learn is aji (taste in Japanese), which is also a lot about potential. A group does not need to have a defined life or death state, if it has some potential to become alive or able to escape and connect to stones that are alive. At an even higher level, you need to understand learn to view the balance of the whole board, grasping what is urgent and/or important. This is something many amateur Dan players wrestle with.
Now when professional Go players were defeated by AIs, it looked like these AIs mastered all those concepts. They excelled at playing a very balanced game, came up with very creative moves that had excellent aji, avoided bad aji. But now the adversary strategy, which can be explained in a few sentences to every Dan level amateur player, reveals that the AIs do not even have a good understanding of life and death. They fall for 'trick' moves that even I, a weak amateur (about 10k) player would have how to defend myself against. If you see some of the final boards, it almost looks the kind of outcomes you would see for players at my level.
Now when professional Go players were defeated by AIs, it looked like these AIs mastered all those concepts. They excelled at playing a very balanced game, came up with very creative moves that had excellent aji, avoided bad aji. But now the adversary strategy, which can be explained in a few sentences to every Dan level amateur player, reveals that the AIs do not even have a good understanding of life and death. They fall for 'trick' moves that even I, a weak amateur (about 10k) player would have how to defend myself against. If you see some of the final boards, it almost looks the kind of outcomes you would see for players at my level.