Alibaba's 'Ai' out to prove it can recognise aesthetic beauty by predicting winner of reality TV singing contest

Artificial intelligence can master the world's most complicated board game, beating South Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-dol in the process. But can it predict the winner of a reality TV singing contest? That is the challenge facing "Ai", an artificial intelligence programme developed by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China's e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba. This Friday, Ai will attempt to prove that it can perceive something as subjective as the aesthetic beauty of musical notes by predicting the winner of Hunan TV's "I'm a Singer". The broadcaster is named after the southern Chinese province in which it is based.