It beat humanity’s best Go players and now Google is using football to train next-generation AI technologies
- The US internet giant published research in June revealing that its ‘Brain Team’ is working on a game known as Google Research Football Environment
After vanquishing the best humanity has to offer in the ancient game of Go, also known as weiqi, Google is now looking to the massively popular game of football to train its next wave of artificial intelligence technology to ‘bend it like Beckham’.
The US internet giant published research in June revealing that its “Brain Team” is working on a game known as Google Research Football Environment to train smart agents that can interact with their environment to solve complex tasks, providing insights into real world AI applications such as autonomous driving and robotics.
The move comes as technology giants push the boundaries of artificial intelligence technology, a form of machine learning that has been dubbed the fourth industrial revolution, as it moves into more corners of everyday life from autonomous driving, smart city infrastructure and internet of things (IoT) applications to workplace automation.
In 2017, Google outplayed the Middle Kingdom at literally its own game, when AlphaGo, a computer programme from Alphabet's DeepMind Technologies, beat the world’s top Go player Ke Jie 3-0 in a Sputnik-like moment that spurred China into a concerted, state-directed effort to catch up in AI.