Earlier this year, one of the world's best Go players, Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol, was beat 4 games out of 5 by Google's AI, AlphaGo. Once again, it will be man versus machine in the upcoming Go Championship this weekend. The world's number 1, Ke Jie, will faceoff against the AlphaGo.
Google's AlphaGo was developed by Google DeepMind in London and solely plays the game. It is be able to learn its opponent's style and strategy of play. The machine proved very powerful in the game indeed as it beat out Korean professional Go player, Lee Sedol earlier this year.
As Arstechnica adds, Lee was the world's highest ranked player from 2007 - 2011 and is considered by many as one of the best players to ever play the game. However, during his battle against Google's AI, he was ranked only 4th in the world.
According to Engadget, it was during the competition between Lee and AlphaGo that the world's number 1, a child prodigy by the name of Ke Jie, noted that he could beat Google's AI machine.
Ke will have his opportunity before the year ends, as confirmed by a spokesperson from the Chinese Go Association. Ke's decision to play against the AlphaGo may come as surprise since he once stated he would never do the same.
He said that, "I don't want it to copy my patterns and learn from me." However, when he saw it consistently defeat Lee, by the third round he noted that AlphaGo had made no mistakes and even admitted that "If the conditions are the same, it is highly likely that I can lose. Ke is taking this opportunity to cement himself as the world's no. 1 Go player.
Go is an abstract strategy game that was developed more than 2,500 years ago in Ancient China. It has a larger board than chest and is considered to be more complex than it. Two individuals play the game and take turns playing white or black stones at points on the board. The winner is determined by whoever has the most number of stones on the board.
