Yearender: Silicon Valley keeps trends as Artificial Intelligence goes mainstream in 2017 - Xinhua

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the buzzword of 2017 as tech companies, from promising startups to big-name firms such as Google and Facebook, are snapping up the AI technology which has changed people's lives and the world. The AI technology, which has experienced a rapid development in the past decade, has outperformed human intelligence in some areas and grown into a "super human artificial intelligence." The stunning power of Artificial Intelligence shocked the whole world last year when Google's AlphaGo beat South Korea' top player, an 18-time world champion Lee Sedol in the game of Go based on a huge database and powerful algorithms. But its latest version, Alpha Go Zero, which learned to teach itself how to play Go with no human background, demonstrated an even more powerful talent by defeating 3-0 the world top-ranking player, China's Ke Jie, and a five world-champion team in another challenge game of Go in May 2017. Similarly, the AI Libratus invented by Carnegie Mellon, skinned the world's top poker players in a poker match in early 2017 by learning through self-play instead of human game data.