Google’s AlphaGo computer system sealed a 4-1 victory over a South Korean Go grandmaster on Tuesday, in a landmark moment for the development of artificial intelligence.
Mastery of the east Asian game of Go was long seen as a stern challenge for computers given its huge complexity. AlphaGo’s creators estimate that there are about 250 potential moves at each point of a game, against 35 in chess, yielding a possible number of board configurations of 10 squared by 170.
Lee Se-dol, arguably the best player of the past decade, had expected to win a crushing victory, arguing that AlphaGo lacked the “intuition” needed to beat him. But the program won the first three games in the series, which began last Wednesday, before Mr Lee clawed back a victory on Sunday.