After the match, Google’s DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained that this was how AlphaGo AI was programmed: to maximise its winning chance, rather than the winning margin. This latest iteration of the AI players, nicknamed Master, apparently uses 10 times less computational powers than its predecessor that beat Lee Sedol, working from a single PC connected to Google’s cloud servers.
We’ve embedded the entire matches here, but for those not completely up to speed with Go, the AI player picked up a 10-15 point lead early on, which limited the possibility for Jie to respond. Jie was occasionally winning during the flow of the matches, but AlphaGo would soon reclaim the leads, ensuring that his human opponent had limited option to win as the game progressed.
According to his human opponents, AlphaGo made many elegant moves: Jie pointed out the AI’s 24th move as a particularly high-level strategies that apparently made “all the stones work across the board.” Intriguingly, the Go prodigy even pitted some of AlphaGo’s own move and strategies early into the matches.
“We’ll release some details of the architectures, of the games that AlphaGo plays against itself, later this weeks,” said the DeepMind CEO. “The reason, ultimately, is to use [AI] more widely in science and medicines to help human experts make faster breakthroughs. We have a lot of works ahead of us in the coming years.”
The second match takes place on Thursday, with the final third matches scheduled for Saturday. Because a computer doesn’t get tired, AlphaGo ‘Master’ will also take parts in two other showcases. In one match, it’ll act as a teammate to two Chinese pros playing each other one on one battle. In another, it’ll challenge five pro players at once. (Which is just showing off, surely.)
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