DailyPost 1170
THE FINAL GO AHEAD!
Go has been at the heart of AI for quite sometime now. A game being at AI centre stage seems ironical. The artificial intelligence research has brought the game there. Having originated 2500 years ago, in China, Go is a strategic board game, most complex in human history. This game has extremely popularity in South Korea having a professional ranking system for its top players. Current times may be the beginning of the end for the most complex game the world has seen.
It all started in 2016 when Lee Se-dol considered to be the best Go player in the world was defeated by AlphaGo, an AI system developed by Google DeepMind. The brainchild of it’s CEO Demis Hassabis, its been redefining AI since its birth as a start up in 2010. Lee lost 4 to 1. With the chequered history of Go, this tech wizardry brought sharp focus to the rapid advancement of AI technology. Since then DeepMind has considerably improved its program.
This has led to the latest integration known as AlphaGo Zero. It has beaten original AlphaGo 100 matches in a row. The pace of machine learning and its precision is mind boggling by analysing thousands of professional matches. It can anticipate the moves and is able to counter with effective strategies and counterplays. AlphaGo Zero has made Chess history playing the games in an alien manner.
DeepMind is rewriting popular strategy games history. In Oct 2019, ”Starcraft 2 AI program, AlphaStar, reached the rank of grandmaster, making it better than 99.8% of all human players.” AI superiority over human players was in the making. With Lee announcing his retirement on 17th of Nov 2019, with an open acceptance of defeat to AI, declaring that AI opponent “cannot be defeated.” Even as world no 1 it is a failure.
LEE’s RETIREMENT IS A WATERSHED MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.