"Success in creating effective A.I.," said the late Stephen Hawking, "could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Are we creating the instruments of our own destruction or exciting tools for our future survival? Once we teach a machine to learn on its own--as the programmers behind AlphaGo have done, to wondrous results--where do we draw moral and computational lines? In this program, leading specialists in A.I., neuroscience, and philosophy tackle the very questions that may define the future of humanity. This program is part of the BIG IDEAS SERIES, made possible with support from the JOHN TEMPLETON FOUNDATION.

The computer that stunned humanity by beating the best mortal players at a strategy board game requiring "intuition" has become even smarter, its makers said Wednesday. Even more startling, the updated version of AlphaGo is entirely self-taught--a major step towards the rise of machines that achieve superhuman abilities "with no human input", they reported in the science journal Nature. Dubbed AlphaGo Zero, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) system learnt by itself, within days, to master the ancient Chinese board game known as "Go"--said to be the most complex two-person challenge ever invented. It came up with its own, novel moves to eclipse all the Go acumen humans have acquired over thousands of years. After just three days of self-training it was put to the ultimate test against AlphaGo, its forerunner which previously dethroned the top human champs.