WUZHEN, China (Reuters) — A Google artificial intelligence program defeated a Chinese grand master at the ancient board game Go on Tuesday (May 23), a major feather in the cap for the firm’s AI ambitions.
In the first of three planned games in the eastern water town of Wuzhen, the AlphaGo program held off China’s world number one Ke Jie in front of Chinese officials and Google parent Alphabet’s chief executive Eric Schmidt.
The victory over the world’s top player – which many thought would take decades to achieve – underlines the potential of artificial intelligence to take on humans at complex tasks.
Ke commented that AlphaGo is now the “God of Go” games but he still prefers to play with human players as he has a better chance of winning.
