The human Go champion, Ke Jie, was recently challenged by Google‘s Deep Mind AlphaGo artificial intelligence to a three-part match. Earlier today, the artificial intelligence beat the Go champion again in their second match by half of a point; Therefore, Google’s AlphaGo is now the best Go player in the entire world. Despite the AI winning the challenge, Ke Jie will still play the third game against the machine this Saturday.
Go is a strategy game that takes place on a 19×19 grid where the players attempt to claim as much territory as possible. Apparently, the game is even harder for computers to understand than Chess is, so the artificial intelligence had to do plenty of practice. In preparation for the match, Google‘s Deep Mind AlphaGo played quite a few games against itself and other Go players. If you are interested in viewing the 6 hour game between Ke Jie and Google’s AI, here it is!
In a press conference, Ke Jie had this to say about his game against the artificial intelligence, “Today’s game was different from the first. AlphaGo made some moves which were opposite from my vision of how to maximize the possibility of winning. I also thought I was very close to winning the game in the middle but maybe that’s not what AlphaGo was thinking. I’m a little bit sad, it’s a bit of a regret because I think I played pretty well.” China has censored the loss from being shown in the human champion’s home country.
While this was a fun experiment, experts are saying that as artificial intelligence becomes a normal thing competition should be kept to a minimum. This artificial intelligence, specifically, will go on to further research in the medical and scientific communities. In the UK, similar artificial has already been put to work in the nation’s healthcare services.
