Think that puny humans don't stand a chance when playing strategy games against an AI? You may have to think again. One person in the US beat an AI at the ancient game of Go by simply distracting it from the attack he was making, a tactic that would be unlikely to work on another meatbag. The player, Kellin Pelrine, is apparently not quite at the top of the amateur rankings for playing Go, but managed to best the AI in 14 out of 15 games, according to the Financial Times. Pelrine used tactics that involved distracting the algorithm with moves in other corners of the board while he worked to surround groups of his opponents' stones.

A strong amateur Go player has beat a highly-ranked AI system after exploiting a weakness discovered by a second computer, The Financial Times has reported. By exploiting the flaw, American player Kellin Pelrine defeated the KataGo system decisively, winning 14 of 15 games without further computer help. It's a rare Go win for humans since AlphaGo's milestone 2016 victory that helped pave the way for the current AI craze. It also shows that even the most advanced AI systems can have glaring blind spots. Pelrine's victory was made possible by a research firm called FAR AI, which developed a program to probe KataGo for weaknesses.

A human player has comprehensively defeated a top-ranked AI system at the board game Go, in a surprise reversal of the 2016 computer victory that was seen as a milestone in the rise of artificial intelligence. Kellin Pelrine, an American player who is one level below the top amateur ranking, beat the machine by taking advantage of a previously unknown flaw that had been identified by another computer. But the head-to-head confrontation in which he won 14 of 15 games was undertaken without direct computer support. The triumph, which has not previously been reported, highlighted a weakness in the best Go computer programs that is shared by most of today's widely used AI systems, including the ChatGPT chatbot created by San Francisco-based OpenAI. The tactics that put a human back on top on the Go board were suggested by a computer program that had probed the AI systems looking for weaknesses.

In March 2016, to much fanfare, AlphaGo beat Go world champion Lee Sedol, convincingly, in a 5 game match, 4 to 1. Computers have only gotten faster since then; one might have thought that the matter was settled. And of course computers have only gotten faster ever since. And the human that won wasn't even a professional Go player, let along a World Champion, just a strong amateur named Kellin Pelrine. And the match wasn't even close; Pelrine beat a top AI system 14 games to 1, in a 15 match series. Almost seven years to the day after AlphaGo beat Sedol.

A few years ago, SRI International introduced their MicroFactory platform, which uses hundreds of tiny robots (each one smaller than a dime) that cooperate to build macro-scale structures, like trusses, which can even contain integrated electronics. Such complex manufacturing requires cooperation between many different micro robots, each one outfitted to perform a specific task. Building a bunch of little custom bots is, we have to assume, a little bit tedious, so SRI has developed a tool shop for their MicroFactory that can make custom end-effectors for micro robots on-demand. SRI's micro robots are really just small magnets: all of the intelligence is built into the substrate that they travel on. Printed circuit boards drive them along electromagnetically, with the ability to control their speed and movement in two axes as well as rotationally.