AlphaGo leaves the go after winning "dry" in a series of matches with the world champion

Five go professional players couldn’t oppose the onslaught of AlphaGo.

Representatives of the company DeepMind recently said that the game with Ke Jie was the last battle of the computer system AlphaGo with a man. After winning all three matches in a row, it became clear that a person couldn’t cope with a computer, so the system simply doesn’t make sense to play other champions of go, the outcome of future matches can be considered predetermined. According to the head of DeepMind Demis Hassabis, AlphaGo has already reached all possible heights in go, so it's time to change your profile and try yourself in a new field.

For the first time, the whole world heard about a computer go player a little over a year ago, when the computer won 4: 1 with Lee Sedol , one of Go champions. No one expected this result, because this game was previously considered difficult for computers. There are a huge number of options for choosing a move, much more than in chess. For this reason, it was considered the prerogative of man. But everything is changing, computers are becoming more perfect, so that modern software and hardware platforms can do what computers did not know just a couple of years ago.


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Let me remind you that two years ago AlphaGo beat the European champion, after which, a year later, she won one of the world champions, Lee Sedol. True, he also managed to achieve victory in one of five matches. Now, after losing to Ke Jie, this gave reason to say that Lee Sedol is the last person who managed to defeat AlphaGo, let him go once.

AlphaGo won all three games against Ke Jie. In the third match, the Chinese champion was forced to surrender, despite the fact that he still had a little more than half an hour to think about the moves. Jie played with white stones, the system played black, so AlphaGo made the first move.


Not only Ke Jie failed to cope with the power of AlphaGo, he did not overcome the system and five other masters who played against the computer with five of them at the same time. The match ended with a complete victory of the AI ​​platform from DeepMind. Another system fought with itself, of course, won and lost at the same time.

Experts who followed the course of the game claim that professionals from the world of the world adopted many computer-developed techniques that led to the victory of the system.


"The AlphaGo team will now throw all its strength to overcome new heights, developing various algorithms that will one day help scientists solve the most difficult problems, for example, determine the pathways for the spread of diseases, reduce energy consumption on a global scale, or create revolutionary new materials," said DeepMind.

He also said that the entire development team had always believed that AlphaGo would be beneficial to humanity. For example, this system can help make some kind of discovery and benefit from it. And go is just an example of what modern technology is capable of. AlphaGo has already helped go players to start looking for new strategic discoveries in the game, which Ke Jie used, in particular. Definitely, this is a success - because the computer was able to help find new interesting aspects in the game, which has already turned 3000 years old.



Interestingly, AlphaGo will not become a publicly accessible service (such as IBM Watson). Developers will use the system while in closed mode, trying to find useful and necessary options for its use. In the near future, DeepMind will publish documents on how this system was able to reach heights and what technologies were used.

AlphaGo played with people as part of the go festival in the Chinese city of Wuzhen (Zhejiang Province). Ke Jie lost the first two games, so after the second match it was clear that the system was the winner, but there was also the third game, participation in which was a matter of honor for Tse.

As for the style of play of the system, one of the professional go players said that the AlphaGo game is considered “human”. “AlphaGo plays very confidently, and it gives me confidence. It helps me to believe that I can control the course of the game, ”said Lien Xiao.

What will AlphaGo do next? Perhaps the system will begin to explore new heights in StarCraft II. A few months ago, the creators of the system, together with Blizzard, announced their intention to create a platform for developing AI systems for playing StarCraft II. Here the computer is still amenable to man, but it will probably be fixed soon.