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.
Why Google’s DeepMind developed Go-playing AI
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.
Ke ended up in tears, calling the AI programme developed by Google that beat him in three straight matches “perfect, flawless, without any emotions”.
Although the US is generally considered to have the lead in AI, the technology occupies a key role in Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” master plan. According to a three-step road map, Beijing wants to keep pace with leading AI technologies and applications in general by 2020; achieve AI breakthroughs by 2025; and finally to be the world leader in a domestic industry worth US$150 billion by 2030.
The Google AI football research effort is led by Karol Kurach, a machine learning researcher at the US company’s Brain Team in Zurich. Football is considered particularly helpful in terms of AI reinforcement learning, as it requires a natural balance between short-term control and learned concepts, such as accurate passing and high-level strategy, according to Google’s AI blog post.
How China aims to dominate the world of robotics
Google's DeepMind unveiled AlphaGo Zero in 2017, a programme that doesn't need the help of human experts to train itself. Zero is considered stronger than the version that beat Ke Jie because it plays against itself and learns from its own experience.
AI has also been developed by DeepMind and OpenAI to play complex games such as Dota and Starcraft, real-time strategy games for multiple players. OpenAI, an AI research organisation based in San Francisco, California, defeated OG, a world-class e-sports team on Dota 2 using its computer program OpenAI Five, in 2018.
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