Microsoft came clean about its next-generation game console, the Xbox Series X, last March. Or they least revealed details about its internal components. Now, attention is being focused on "Lockhart," the code name for what most assume is a cheaper and less powerful version of the Xbox Series X. That Microsoft should have a second version of the Xbox Series X is no surprise; today, Microsoft sells a $299 Xbox One S as a cheaper alternative to the $399 Xbox One X. It's possible, then, that Microsoft could simply call this next-gen console the Xbox Series S, a name that's already stuck among enthusiasts.

The Role: Once relegated to science fiction, machine learning is a fast-growing field of computer science today. It focuses on designing algorithms that allow machines to make decisions based on information they gather themselves, finding patterns and insights in places they weren't explicitly programmed to look, mimicking human learning. Machine learning can be found in many products today, such as when streaming services recommend a new show or artist based on previous consumption habits, a text messaging application guesses the rest of a sentence or an autonomous vacuum cleaner swerves around the leg of a table that it crashed into earlier. In each example the machine has adjusted its behaviour based on information it has gathered on its own. It is up to a machine learning engineer to design the complex algorithms that enable machines to gather information and identify such patterns.

Choong-am Dojang is far from a typical Korean school. Its best pupils will never study history or math, nor will they receive traditional high-school diplomas. The academy, which operates above a bowling alley on a narrow street in northwestern Seoul, teaches only one subject: the game of Go, known in Korean as baduk and in Chinese as wei qi. Each day, Choong-am's students arrive at nine in the morning, find places at desks in a fluorescent-lit room, and play, study, memorize, and review games--with breaks for cafeteria meals or an occasional soccer match--until nine at night. Choong-am, which is the product of a merger between four top Go academies, is currently the biggest of a handful of dojangs in South Korea. Many of the students enrolled in these schools have been training since they were four or five, perhaps playing informally at first but later growing obsessed with the game's beauty and the competitiveness and camaraderie that surround it.