How artificial intelligence is taking Asia by storm

THE world reeled when Lee Sedol – one of the great modern players of the ancient board game Go – was beaten by Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) program, AlphaGo. The AI managed to outmaneuver Lee at his own game, one which rewards players' strategic judgment and creative analyses. To achieve this, DeepMind provided AlphaGo with the basic framework of the game, recordings of previous games and made it play itself continuously. The software mimics the processes of human learning – and as it went along, AlphaGo learned to be a better player over time. The day of the face-off, AlphaGo beat Lee four games to one and was awarded the highest Go game-master ranking.