The Game of Go Is No Longer Insurmountable for AI

Google has taken a brilliant and unexpected step toward building an AI with more humanlike intuition, developing a computer capable of beating even expert human players at the fiendishly complicated board game Go. The objective of Go, a game invented in China more than 2,500 years ago, is fairly simple: players must alternately place black and white "stones" on a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines with the aim of surrounding the opponent's pieces, and avoiding having one's own pieces surrounded. Mastering Go, however, requires endless practice, as well as a finely tuned knack of recognizing subtle patterns in the arrangement of the pieces spread across the board. Google's team has shown that the skills needed to master Go are not so uniquely human after all. Their computer program, called AlphaGo, beat the European Go champion, Fan Hui, five games to zero.