Facebook Reveals 'ELF' OpenGo Bot Code After Being 'Inspired' By DeepMind

Mike Schroepfer, Facebook CTO speaks during the second day of the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal on November 8, 2016. Facebook and Google DeepMind's race to create an artificial intelligence (AI) that could beat professional players at the ancient Chinese board game of Go has been no secret. Mastering Go -- one of the most complex games on the planet for computers to excel at due to the sheer number of possible moves -- has been the dream of AI researchers for decades but only recently did big tech firms like Facebook and Google start throwing millions of dollars at the cause in the hope that it will lead to further breakthroughs. DeepMind arguably won the race in March 2016 when its AlphaGo AI agent beat Lee Sedol, one of the best Go players ever, by four games to one. But Facebook's "ELF" OpenGo bot isn't far behind now -- it too has defeated world champion and professional Go players.