A Point for AI, Hope for Mankind

The Future of Go Summit was recently held by the Chinese Go Association, Sport Bureau of Zhejiang Province, and Google, in Wuzhen, China on May 23.

As part of the summit, the world’s number one Go player Ke Jie first went head-to-head against the new and improved AlphaGo. The Go-playing machine came out victorious in all parts of a three-part game. A year ago, AlphaGo wowed the Go community when it crushed South Korean grandmaster Lee Se-dol 4-1.

AlphaGo’s initial victory in the summit showed that it may go on a winning streak which already started when “Master,” AlphaGo’s pseudonym for its new incarnation, defeated some of the world’s top Go players, Ke Jie included, on a series of online matches in January.

Match commentator Michael Redmond noted that Ke Jie has improved a lot and used a lot of Master’s moves from the online matches in January. On the other hand, Ke Jie recognized on his first defeat during the summit how much the AI computer program has become a completely different player with its new architecture. He called AlphaGo brilliant and godlike despite declaring last year that he would never lose to an AI opponent.

Following the conclusion of the game, DeepMind announced that it would be AlphaGo’s last match. CEO Demis Hassabis said that AlphaGo’s victory “represented the highest possible pinnacle for AlphaGo as a competitive program.” Hassabis added that the next endeavor for the research team is to develop advanced general algorithms. His team hopes that someday, scientists would use their algorithms to address some of mankind’s most complex problems including finding new cures for diseases, dramatically reducing energy consumption, or inventing revolutionary materials.

Moreover, Google wrote in an official written statement that the company has always believed in the potential of artificial intelligence and how it can help society discover new knowledge that can be used for development. It considers AlphaGo a machine that just gave mankind a glimpse of what artificial intelligence has to offer.

Although the best human Go player was defeated three times, AlphaGo’s success is also mankind’s success as it sparked hope in the role of AI in delivering more benefits to mankind.