Computer beats human champion player in ancient Chinese game of Go

World Today

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, right, is seen on the screen during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google’s artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Google’s computer program AlphaGo defeated its human opponent, South Korean Go champion Lee Sedol, on Wednesday in the first face-off of a historic five-game match.

AlphaGo‘s victory in the ancient Chinese board game is a breakthrough for artificial intelligence, showing the program developed by Google DeepMind has mastered one of the most creative and complex games ever devised.

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, right, prepares for his second stone against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, as Google DeepMind's lead programmer Aja Huang, left, sits during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, right, prepares for his second stone against Google’s artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, as Google DeepMind’s lead programmer Aja Huang, left, sits during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

Commentators said the match was close, with both AlphaGo and Lee making some mistakes and a result that was unpredictable until near the end.

Lee’s loss was a shock to South Koreans and Go fans. The 33-year-old initially was confident of a sweeping victory two weeks ago, but sounded less optimistic a day before the match.

“I was very surprised because I did not think that I would lose the game. A mistake I made at the very beginning lasted until the very last,” said Lee, who has won 18 world championships since becoming a professional Go player at the age of 12.

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol is seen on the TV screens during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, at the Yongsan Electronic store in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol is seen on the TV screens during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google’s artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, at the Yongsan Electronic store in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Lee said AlphaGo’s early strategy was “excellent” and that he was stunned by one unconventional move it made that a human never would have played.

Despite his initial loss, he did not regret accepting the challenge.

“I had a lot of fun playing Go and I’m looking forward to the future games,” he said, smiling calmly.

The loss shook the South Korean Go community. Yoo Chang-hyuk, also a South Korean Go master, said it was a big shock.

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol attends at a press conference after the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol attends at a press conference after the Google DeepMind Challenge Match against Google’s artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

“It did not play like a human at all,” Kim Sung-ryong, another Go expert, said of the computer’s lack of emotion despite making some potentially fatal mistakes.

Hundreds of thousands of people watched the game live on TV and YouTube. The remaining four matches will end on Tuesday.

Computers conquered chess in 1997 in a match between IBM’s Deep Blue and chess champion Garry Kasparov, leaving Go as “the only game left above chess” Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO, said before the game.

In a game of Go, known as Weiqi in Chinese, the players are required to secure their territory on the board, and the person with the most territory is the winner. The game originated in China more than 2,500 years ago,

Top human players rely heavily on intuition and feelings to choose among a near-infinite number of board positions in Go, making the game extremely challenging for the artificial intelligence community.

DeepMind team built “reinforcement learning” into AlphaGo, meaning the machine plays against itself and adjusts its own neural networks based on trial-and-error. AlphaGo can also narrow down the search space for the next best move from the near-infinite to something more manageable. It also can anticipate long-term results of each move and predict the winner.

AlphaGo’s win over a human champion shows computers can mimic intuition and tackle more complex tasks, its creators say. They believe that ability could be used to help scientists solve tough real-world problems in health care and other areas.

Story by the Associated Press with information from CCTV News.