Google cosies up to China with AI secrets and a game of Go

Chinese Go player Ke Jie reacts during his first match with Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo at the Future of Go Summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China May 23, 2017. Years after Beijing locked out virtually every Alphabet Inc service, executive chairman Eric Schmidt and a cadre of mid-level Chinese government officials kicked off a summit in the canal-laced town of Wuzhen today: A rare instance of the search leader working in tandem with the country's bureaucrats at a high-profile public event. Google experts and prominent local academics will exchange notes and host discussions but the centrepiece will be the 2,500-year-old strategy board game between DeepMind's so-far undefeated AlphaGo system and local champion Ke Jie. Google's absence from China -- a country it initially withdrew from amid fears of censorship and cyber-attacks -- remains the biggest gap in its dominance of global search and video. While Android is the country's most popular mobile software and it sells advertising, other services including search, Gmail, apps and maps are barred by the mainland's firewall.