Update | Baidu’s AI robot upstaged by Google’s AlphaGo in show down against humans

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Google’s artificial intelligence bot DeepMind squared off against South Korea Go player Lee Se-dol (right) and eventually won. This photo shows the fourth showdown between the players during a challenge head in Seoul on March 13, 2016. Photo: Google

Published: 7:59pm, 5 Jan 2017Updated: 4:21pm, 6 Jan 2017

Baidu’s Deep Learning Lab, which is leading the artificial intelligence programme at China’s dominant internet search engine, was upstaged by Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo on its home turf when it announced a duel against human competitors scheduled to be broadcast across China on Friday.

Deep Learning Lab will enter its artificial intelligence robot to solve problems in the popular television game show Super Brain in China. The challenge will involve using facial and voice recognition skills in three rounds against human challengers.

Watch: Baidu CEO says AI is next growth driver for company at the Hangzhou G-20

But rather than a threat to humans, AI is going to help people solve many problems and increase efficiency and productively

Lin Yuanqing, head of Baidu’s Institute of Deep Learning

The first round of the Baidu AI versus humans contest will be aired on Jiangsu Satellite TV Station on Friday night.

Representing humanity in the challenge are a number of gifted individuals who won the previous Super Brain contest. For example, Wang Yuheng, a person with incredible eyesight, can quickly identify a selected glass of water from 520 glasses.

Andrew Ng, Baidu’s chief scientist, said in a video introduction of the show on Thursday that the facial and voice recognition puzzles they have chosen are very difficult for computers, but relatively easy for people.

“Humans have evolved thousands of years to recognise faces and they have intuition to do that. But computers have to do that by loading data,” he said.