Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players, in which the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent. It wasn’t prevalent outside of East Asia, with most people hearing about the game within the last year due to an artificial intelligence program called AlphaGo.
AlphaGo was an AI developed by a DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence company that was acquired by Google in 2014, designed to go toe-to-toe with the world’s greatest Go Players. AlphaGo drew headlines last year when the AI handily beat former Go world champion Lee Sedol 4-1. The win was hailed as a huge leap forward in the advancement of AI technology as the game is famous for its deep complexity, boundless possibility of moves and strategic thinking. Until AlphaGo came along, no AI had won a game against its world champions. Lee Sedol wasn’t the first champion it had defeated, as AlphaGo had beat the European Go Champion in the previous year.
The latest Go champion to fall prey to AlphaGo was Ke Jie, the current top-seeded Go player, who lost 3-0 against the legendary AI. However, Deepmind’s AI has also hung its gloves, as Google plans to apply the AI towards more practical solutions and problems.
“This week’s series of thrilling games with the world’s best players, in the country where Go originated, has been the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program. For that reason, the Future of Go Summit is our final match event with AlphaGo. The research team behind AlphaGo will now throw their energy into the next set of grand challenges, developing advanced general algorithms that could one day help scientists as they tackle some of our most complex problems, such as finding new cures for diseases, dramatically reducing energy consumption, or inventing revolutionary new materials.”
– Demis Hassabis, CEO & Co-Founder of Deepmind.
However, the AI will still impact the professional Go scene as a teaching tool for Go is in the process of being released by Deepmind. The tool will show artificial intelligence’s analysis of Go positions, providing an insight into how the program thinks, and hopefully giving all players and fans the opportunity to see the game through the lens of AlphaGo.
