Wondering how humanity's last champion of Go, one of the most complex games of strategy ever devised by our species, fared against's Google all-conquering overlord?
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This week, humanity's last line of Go defence against machine learning sat down to see whether puny humans could hold their own.
Surprise: we can't.
After flogging one of the world's best Go players over the last decade, and then massacring the current world champion to the point where he kept saying "it's too strong", Google's AlphaGo needs new frontiers to conquer. So what do you do when one of the world's best players of one of humanity's oldest and most complex strategy games isn't difficult enough? You play five at once, of course.
Yesterday I reported on how a mystery account called "Master" had been tearing up the world of online Go, and nobody knew who it was. But in an update posted on Twitter earlier this morning, Google has admitted that the mystery account "Master", as well as a second account "Magister", was their world-beating AlphaGo bot all along.
Right now, there's a player lurking in the depths of the online Go scene that is laying waste to some of the best players in the world. It's called Master, and nobody knows who it is.
Lee Sedol didn't think it would be a challenge. 5-0. 4-1, at a stretch. That was the expectations of the South Korean Go professional heading into his five game, US$1 million exhibition match against Google's AlphaGo, the DeepMind-powered agent of board game destruction.
The score's currently 3-1 and not in the South Korean's favour, and it took a fairly gargantuan comeback to get the score to that. The 18-time world Go champion even said he wouldn't trade the win for anything in the world. But do you think that has have stopped StarCraft players from being cocky over their potential man vs machine match? Of course not.
Google's AI program AlphaGo will be wearing its "Deep Blue" hat this week as it attempts to beat the world champion of the board game Go in a series of five matches. Here's how to watch the showdown live.
Most people are familiar with the story and background behind Deep Blue, and AIs have been mastering quizzes, board games and computer games for a decades. But there's always been one that has proven to be trickier than the rest: the ancient board game of Go.
Go's a fascinating game, and the many millions of possible permutations makes things tricky for a computer. But Google, of all companies, has finally conquered that last barrier by slapping the reigning three-time European Go champion around the board.
