Traditionally, shorthand has been most widely used in the legal and political arenas, but did you know that stenographers also preserve the record at corporate, showbiz and entertainment events?  Through the use of realtime technology, the record at these events can also be shared instantaneously with the audience through big-screen subtitling and/or remote streaming.

Google DeepMind recently launched its showcase artificial intelligence (AI) platform, AlphaGo, a program designed to play the ancient Chinese game ‘Go’. Beautifully simplistic, ‘Go’ is played on a 19×19 grid – and with more potential moves than there are atoms in the universe, and hitherto considered beyond programming capability. Profoundly more complex than chess, and requiring subtle intuition, a legitimate computer competitor in “Go” was considered at least a decade away by tech analysts.  And yet, stunningly, AlphaGo beat world champion Lee Sedol 4-1 in the five-game match, reshaping our perceptions of artificial intelligence. 280 million viewers around the world watched the matches, and as a result of the outcome, the South Korean government has already pledged it will invest US$863 million in AI research over the next five years.

Planet Depos captioned the gala launch of the AlphaGo v Lee Sedol match in Seoul, Korea, providing live English subtitles for the audience of dignitaries including Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.  Korean subtitles were provided by native stenographers. From the speeches of Marcus Cicero in 65BC to the unthinkable developments in artificial intelligence in 2016, when the spoken word must be preserved, a shorthand writer is never far away.