Also it's very likely if the human played stronger in the last match, the computer also would have stepped up. Computers tend to sacrifice points (i.e. "big leads") for assured victory, so unless the human is stronger than the computer, you cannot know it's true potential.

That's a common strategy in human game play and sports as well. It has been observed many times that humans on their own in regular sports do much worse than doing the same in competition against a somewhat stronger party. As they say: one boat is a cruise, two boats, it's a race.

To be fair, he's 8-2 vs Lee Sedol head to head and he's only 19 years old.

He's great, to be sure, but only Sedol knows what it's like to be in this position. The pressure must be immense.

>Seems like hubris to me.

I assumed that, since this has been in the news, he's promoting himself to be next in line to take on the computer. The purpose being the publicity and earnings associated with participating in an event like this (it's not often Go makes it into the mainstream media).

Matches have been regularly televised for decades.

This is very interesting. We have a way to test what he say. A match between the machine and this player with the game in the situation he describes. If he defeats the machine he proves that the machine game is nothing beyond our capabilities.