Go, AlphaGo, And The Reach Of Machine Learning

Nineteen years after Big Blue defeated chess master Garry Gasparov by winning 3 ½ – 2 ½ (2 wins, 1 loss and 3 draws), history is repeating itself. This time, it involves the game of Go and AlphaGo, and a team of researchers from Alphabet taking on the South Korean master Lee Sedol. The AlphaGo team has claimed victory in 4 out of 5 games and has accomplished the unthinkable one more time--the machine is better than the human at playing a game with billions of possibilities. Beside the obvious excitement of pitting man vs. machine, why should you care about the game of Go and AlphaGo? The AlphaGo algorithm is powered by a combination of techniques including machine learning that allow him to learn millions of moves and how to play the game.