It was a clear struggle between man and machine – a Mechanical Turk for the modern day, but with no sneaky human enclosed within! As it happens, those of us who may already be worried about being replaced by robots may well have real cause for concern, as Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence, named AlphaGo, finished its five-match Go challenge against Korean Lee Se-dol (left) with another emphatic win.
The AI took to the ancient strategy board-game Go like a fish in water, beating Mr Lee 4-1, despite his status as one of the world’s leading (human) players. In Go, players take turns placing black and white tokens on a 19x19 grid; it is widely considered to be more challenging for computers than the usual game of choice: chess.
Despite Mr Lee falling before the intellectual might of AlphaGo, China’s top ranked player, Ke Jie, has said that he is ready to stick up for our species and attempt to beat the machine – though even he seemed slightly wary of DeepMind after watching its latest victory.
"In terms of probability, I have a chance to win,” Ke Jie told China Central Television, “but the probability is not as high as I thought before. I think it is 60 per cent in favour of me."
Whether a 60 per cent chance is high enough to reassure those of us who may be envisaging some sort of Terminator-style uprising remains to be seen. What we do know is that DeepMind is just the latest development in the ever-strengthening world of applicable, and problem-solving, Artificial Intelligence.
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