CNN: Korean Go master quits the game because AI ‘cannot be defeated’. “A South Korean master of the ancient strategy game Go has announced his retirement from professional competition due to the rise of what he says is unbeatable artificial intelligence. The news that Lee Se-dol is bowing out comes three years after he lost in a closely watched series against Google’s AlphaGo in 2016.”
The Verge: AlphaGo retires from competitive Go after defeating world number one 3-0. “AlphaGo is going out on top. After beating Ke Jie, the world’s best player of the ancient Chinese board game Go, for the third time today at the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, Google’s DeepMind unit announced that it would be the last event match the AI plays.”
TechCrunch: Google’s AlphaGo AI defeats team of five leading Go players. “Are five human heads better than one computer brain? Not when it comes to playing Go. AlphaGo, the AI created to play the game of Go better than anyone alive, has defeated a team made up of five Go champions in a demonstration match on Friday.”
CNET: Google AI AlphaGo wins again, leaves humans in the dust. “Two days ago in the Zhejiang Province of China, Google’s Go-playing artificial intelligence AlphaGo bested current world Go champion Ke Jie in the first game of a three-part match, sliding by on a half-point victory. Now the second game has taken place — and once again, AlphaGo has emerged the winner.”
The Next Web: Google’s AlphaGo AI takes the scalp of the world’s number one Go player. “Google confidently continues its march into the field of artificial intelligence as yesterday its DeepMind-based AlphaGo defeated the world’s number one ranked Go player, Ke Jie.”
Google AI Go Player is on the move again. “The world’s number-one Go player has ‘one last move’ and will face off against Google’s AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) in April. The match between Ke Jie, the world’s top-ranked Go player under Rémi Coulom’s unofficial ranking system, and DeepMind’s Go-playing program AlphaGo will take place in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province.”
Google is letting its Go-playing AI rack up the wins online. “Over the last few days, an unknown Go player named ‘Master’ has won 60 of 61 online matches against some of the best players in the world. Google has now fessed-up, admitting that ‘Master’ is actually the AlphaGo AI, and that it has been secretly playing humans in order to test an improved version.”
Uh-oh, looks like Google’s Go-playing AI AlphaGo is playing another human challenger. “The world’s top Go (or Weiqi) player, 19-year-old Chinese Ke Jie, is likely to compete with an AI-powered Go-playing system in October in Hainan province, according to a tweet on Chinese Twitter-like Sina Weibo. The tweet is believed to have been posted by the account of Ke’s official fan club. It also quoted a picture originally tweeted by Ke on his personal Weibo account, illustrating that he is confident he will defeat AlphaGo even though the system has defeated South Korean Go master Lee Sedol.”
The AlphaGo AI challenge has apparently caused a surge of interest in the board game Go. “Go Game Guru, a website dedicated to promoting and selling the game of Go, said there is a worldwide shortage of Go equipment after the recent match between DeepMind’s AlphaGo AI and Go world champion Lee Sedol, which AlphaGo won 4-1.”
Looks like Google’s AlphaGo AI program might get a new challenger – only this one will be an AI program, too. “Scientists from the China Computer Go team will issue a challenge to AlphaGo by the end of 2016, said attendees at an event in Beijing organized by the Chinese Go Association and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, according to the report. It did not elaborate on the nature of the challenge.”
Google wraps up the recent Go tournament featuring its AI, AlphaGo. “We’ve learned two important things from this experience. First, this test bodes well for AI’s potential in solving other problems. AlphaGo has the ability to look ‘globally’ across a board—and find solutions that humans either have been trained not to play or would not consider. This has huge potential for using AlphaGo-like technology to find solutions that humans don’t necessarily see in other areas. Second, while the match has been widely billed as ‘man vs. machine,’ AlphaGo is really a human achievement. Lee Sedol and the AlphaGo team both pushed each other toward new ideas, opportunities and solutions—and in the long run that’s something we all stand to benefit from.” I hope Lee Se-dol feels the same way about it.
And apparently these victories have got Facebook talking some smack. “After a message of congratulations following the first victory, [Yann] LeCun’s Facebook posts seemed to rapidly focus on bursting DeepMind’s bubble. ‘Congrats to the DeepMind AlphaGo team for this Grand Slam,’ he posted after the group won the match with the third straight victory. ‘Now, can you do it purely through reinforcement learning, without pre-training the convolutional net on recorded games between humans?’” Dude, do you even AI?
The last game in the AlphaGo/Se-dol go series has been played, and AlphaGo won. So it ends up 4-1 AlphaGo. I really thought after winning game 4, Lee Se-dol would capitalize on whatever he did in game 4 and repeat it to win game five. At least he got one.
South Korea’s Go Association thinks Google’s AlphaGo go-playing AI is divine. That’s not a compliment, that’s a rank. “Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo has been awarded the highest go grandmaster rank, reserved for those whose ability at the ancient board game borders on ‘divinity,’ South Korea’s Go Association said Tuesday.”
It’s not going to be a shutout! Lee Se-Dol has finally beaten Google’s AI in the fourth of their five Go matches. “Lee Se-Dol thrashed AlphaGo after a nail-biting match that lasted for nearly five hours…”
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