If you still had any doubts regarding the AI’s capabilities, let this put them to rest. Google’s AlphaGo AI has surpassed the combined efforts of five of the world’s leading Go players. This era defining event took place on Friday, during a demonstration match between Alpha Go and a team comprised of Chen Yaoye, Zho Ruiyang, Mi Yuting, Shi Yue and Tang Weixing.
You can Google any of the names above and you will see them accompanied by a whole bunch of laurels they have picked up thanks to their prowess in the game of Go. And you can Google AlphaGo as well, and you might see names like “best go player in the world”.
The event also saw humans partnering up with the AI to play against each other.
Speaking about the event, Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt said:
This speaks volumes about where AI is headed – human players are teaming up with AlphaGo to have even more fun with the game!
For those who have been missing out, Go is an ancient Chinese game played with white and black pieces on a board. The objective of the game is to capture as much territory as you can, and the AlphaGo AI seems to be particularly adept at it. Indeed, adept to the point of beating all the top players in the world — not once, but several time over.
Meanwhile, this does bring several questions to mind. Clearly, AlphaGo is better than any other player in the world. There are people who may dispute this but hey, the AI has just beaten a team made up of the world’s best. Eventually, we can expect other games to pick up this trend too and what then? Will the human players be sidelined as we watch AIs competing with each other in awesomely complicated games? Or will we see AI augmenting the human gameplay?
