When researchers inside Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence lab first built AlphaGo--the machine that plays the ancient game of Go better than any human--they needed human help. The machine learned to play this exceedingly complex game by analyzing about 300 million moves by professional Go players. Then, once AlphaGo could mimic human play, it reached an even higher level by playing game after game against itself, closely tracking the results of each move. In the end, the machine was good enough to beat the Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol, the best player of the last decade. But then, about a year ago, DeepMind redesigned the system.

In an age of self-driving cars, virtual reality worlds and artificial intelligence, some would say the future is already here. Technology moves at such breakneck speeds that companies in Silicon Valley often have product roadmaps that stretch five to ten years ahead. In the search for the next big thing, we often lose sight of the even bigger picture: of how the actions of today can affect our great-great grandchildren of tomorrow. The Long Now, however, is a foundation that aims to correct that. Created in 1996, the Long Now is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization dedicated to long-term thinking.

RoboCup is an international scientific initiative with the goal to advance the state of the art of intelligent robots. Established in 1997, the original mission was to field a team of robots capable of winning against the human soccer World Cup champions by 2050. To celebrate 20 years of RoboCup, the Federation is launching a video series featuring each of the leagues with one short video for those who just want a taster, and one long video for the full story. Robohub will be featuring one league every week leading up to RoboCup 2017 in Nagoya, Japan. This week, we take a look at the heart-pumping excitement watching the popular RoboCup soccer leagues.

Internet users outside China watched a computer defeat its national go champion, but few Chinese web surfers could see it. Censors blocked access to Tuesday's online broadcast by Google, which organized the game in a town west of Shanghai during a forum on artificial intelligence. The event got little coverage from Chinese newspapers and broadcasters, suggesting they might have received orders to avoid mentioning Google, which closed its China-based search engine in 2010 in a dispute over censorship and computer hacking. The official response to the game, a major event for go and artificial intelligence, reflects the conflict between the ruling Communist Party's technology ambitions and its insistence on controlling what its public can see, hear and read.

DeepMind's board game-playing AI, AlphaGo, may well have won its first game against the Go world number one, Ke Jie, from China – but but most Chinese viewers could not watch the match live. The Chinese government had issued a censorship notice to broadcasters and online publishers, warning them against livestreaming Tuesday's game, according to China Digital Times, a site that regularly posts such notices in the name of transparency. "Regarding the go match between Ke Jie and AlphaGo, no website, without exception, may carry a livestream," the notice read. "If one has been announced in advance, please immediately withdraw it." The ban did not just cover video footage: outlets were banned from covering the match live in any way, including text commentary, social media, or push notifications.

Facebook's controversial guidance for moderators isn't as ill-conceived as many people believe, according to a forensic linguist whose work on threat and language analysis helps the police convict criminals. Leaked internal documents revealed that the site's moderators are instructed to delete certain threats but leave others up, depending on how "credible" they are. They were heavily criticised and widely considered to be confusing, with some people branding the guidance as counterintuitive. "There was nothing [in the leaked slides] that struck me as being completely in the wrong direction," Aston University's Professor Tim Grant told The Independent. "It all makes sense in a simplistic way. There's nothing that makes you think'that's completely wrong'. It's the idea that there can be simple criteria that is worrying. Threat analysis is a bit more complicated than this."

The world's best player of what might be humankind's most complicated board game was defeated on Tuesday by a Google computer program. Adding insult to potentially deep existential injury, he was defeated at Go -- a game that claims centuries of play by humans -- in China, where the game was invented. The human contender, a 19-year-old Chinese national named Ke Jie, and the computer are only a third of the way through their three-game match this week. And the contest does little to prove that software can mollify an angry co-worker, write a decent poem, raise a well-adjusted child or perform any number of distinctly human tasks. But the victory by software called AlphaGo showed yet another way that computers could be developed to perform better than humans in highly complex tasks, and it offered a glimpse of the promise of new technologies that mimic the way the brain functions.

Google artificial intelligence unit DeepMind teamed up with Chinese authorities to hold a five-day festival in the country this week focused on the ancient game of Go. The centerpiece of the event is a three-game contest pitting a DeepMind computer program against China's world Go champion, Ke Jie -- all of it livestreamed on Google's YouTube. Just one problem: Chinese Go fans couldn't watch the first game on Tuesday because the YouTube livestream was blocked in China. DeepMind's AlphaGo program won by just half a point. Major Chinese news websites were prepared to livestream the game, but the plans were suddenly canceled, according to people with knowledge of the plans who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Garry Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time, is famous for his pair of faceoffs against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. Kasparov won the first match against the computer, 4-2, in 1996, but lost in the rematch, 3½-2½, in 1997. He recently published a book, "Deep Thinking," about the experience. Business Insider recently spoke with Kasparov about Deep Blue, his thoughts on AI, and machine advancements over the past 20 years -- and how he sees the interplay between machine intelligence and humanity. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Garry Kasparov: AI as a concept is surrounded by mythology. Most of the things we mention we understand. You know, if we say "white," we all see it's white. If we talk about elements of computer science or some general items, we are in agreement.

Microsoft stripped the numbers from its new Surface Pro hybrid, and we talk the future of fashion, as well as why the perfect prosthetic hand is still many years way. Meanwhile, Google's AI-powered Go player beat the world's best human Go master. There are, however, still two matches left. The refreshed Surface Pen also adds tilt sensitivity.Microsoft made the Surface Pro both lighter and quieter Microsoft has left the Surface Pro line untouched since late 2015, but the company finally gave it a subtle refresh today. Announced at an event in Shanghai yesterday, the new Surface Pro has updated 7th-gen Intel Core processors and enhanced 12.3-inch PixelSense display, plus an LTE option due later this year. Microsoft calls this "the lightest, the best sounding, the fastest and the quietest Surface Pro ever," and the company was keen to stress that its machine is 1.7 times faster than the iPad Pro.