China catching up to US in race towards artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence from a Chinese tech giant has defeated the country's best player of the board game Go, despite giving the grandmaster an advantage -- matching and perhaps surpassing Google's efforts last year. The artificial intelligence (AI) developed by Chinese company Tencent beat world number-two Go player Ke Jie last week with a two-stone handicap, the official People's Daily newspaper reported. Handicaps are used in Go to even out the difference in skill level between players. Google's AlphaGo AI beat Ke last year just months after defeating fellow grandmaster Lee Se-dol of South Korea -- however AlphaGo has never competed against top-level players using a handicap. AlphaGo has since been placed in retirement, with Google instead focusing its energies on its self-teaching AlphaGo Zero machine, which mastered the complex game in 40 days last year.