Artificial Intelligence Just Mastered Go, But One Game Still Gives AI Trouble

(Credit: Saran Poroong/Shutterstock) Go is a two-player board game that originated in China more than 2,500 years ago. The rules are simple, but Go is widely considered the most difficult strategy game to master. For artificial intelligence researchers, building an algorithm that could take down a Go world champion represents the holy grail of achievements. Well, consider the holy grail found. A team of researchers led by Google DeepMind researchers David Silver and Demis Hassabis designed an algorithm, called AlphaGo, which in October 2015 handily defeated back-to-back-to-back European Go champion Fan Hui five games to zero. And as a side note, AlphaGo won 494 out of 495 games played against existing Go computer programs prior to its match with Hui — AlphaGo even spotted inferior programs four free moves. “It’s fair to say that this is five to 10 years ahead of what people were expecting, even experts in the field,” Hassabis said in a news conference Tuesday. Deep Blue took humans to the woodshed in chess. IBM’s Watson raked in winnings in Jeopardy! Silver and Hassabis in 2015 unveiled an algorithm that taught itself to conquer classic Atari games. Every year, it seems, humanity waves fewer and fewer title belts over computers in the world of games. In March, 32-year-old Lee Sedol — the greatest Go player of the decade — will represent mankind in a Kasparov-like battle of wits against AlphaGo in Seoul, South Korea. Should Sedol fall, consider Go yet another game flesh and blood has relinquished mastery to silicon. But there’s one prize that computers will struggle to take — for a while, at least — from humans: a World Series of Poker bracelet. Ten-player, no-limit poker is the final vestige of our recreational supremacy, and the reasons computers struggle to win this game illustrate a big-picture problem that AI researchers are working to solve. AlphaGo was a step in that direction.