Man vs machine: AlphaGo AI to face the world’s best human Go player in China
Mouth-watering encounter will see Google’s AI take on China’s Ke Jie at the ancient strategy game in May as part of a conference in Wuzhen
After sweeping wins over some of the world’s Go masters, Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence is coming to China, the birthplace of the millenia-old board game, to pit its wits against the very best the human race has to offer.
London-based DeepMind said on Monday that AlphaGo, its Go-playing AI, will have a classic one-on-one, best of three match against the world’s No 1 player, China’s Ke Jie in late May.
“AlphaGo is beyond the imagination of Go players,” said Ke Jie during an event in Beijing on Monday.
“It feels like I am standing at a point where history changes. It is a great honor to witness a strong competitor like AlphaGo and I will do my best and will not give up easily.”
The mouth-watering encounter between AlphaGo and 19-year-old Ke will form part of a five-day summit in Wuzhen, a town in East China’s Zhejiang province, that will explore how AlphaGo has created new knowledge about this ancient game of strategy. It will also focus on how the technologies behind machine learning and artificial intelligence are bringing solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges into reach.
