Machine outsmarts man in battle of the decade

摘要

Last week, millions of people watched a man play a computer in one of humanity's oldest boardgames - Go. An artificial intelligence trained by DeepMind - a start-up firm in London owned by Google - played five games against Lee Sedol, one of the game's leading players. The AlphaGo Al was ahead from the opening game. "It's so shocking. I expected AlphaGo to win one game, but I didn't expect it to be the first one," said Myung-wan Kim, a 9-dan professional Go player living in Los Angeles, after the first game. Lee felt the same: "I am in shock, I admit that. I didn't think AlphaGo would play the game in such a perfect manner." It got worse for Lee, the South Korean hero, as he lost the second and third games. AlphaGo flashed its calculating nature towards the end of the game two, when It seemed to make a mistake that allowed Lee to capture several stones. Lee blinked in disbelief, but it was false hope. AlphaGo didn't care about the margin of victory - it makes whichever move will maximise its chances of winning.