AlphaGo Defeated Lee Se-dol in Go Match

Google’s artificial intelligence system AlphaGo defeated Korea's Go genius Lee Se-dol in their first match on March 9. After the match, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said on Twitter that he was proud of his team and expressed his respect to the world Go champion. Lee Se-dol also showed respect to AlphaGo developers.

On that same day, Google announced its plan to develop machine learning that will be the foundation of AI. “In StarCraft, players should be aware of how the game is going on the part of his or her opponent as well unlike in board games such as the game of Go,” said Mr. Jeff Dean at the Google Brain Team, continuing, “StarCraft will be another challenge for AlphaGo that requires its different capabilities.”

 “When machine learning is utilized, the performance of Google’s existing products and services can be improved and challenges in a great variety of fields become possible, and we will rack our brains to make good use of machine learning in the fields including healthcare and robotics so that it can contribute to improving the quality of people’s lives,” Dean added.

The first match was neck-and-neck from the get go. Lee Se-dol made unexpected moves from the beginning of the match to get the inside track and AlphaGo kept its pace in a calm way. AlphaGo’s performance was beyond people’s expectations.

 “AlphaGo is comparable to professional Go players,” a commentator admired. Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, said that the match will be a milestone in the development of AI.