Search Search Google AlphaGo computer beats professional at 'world's most complex board game' Go More complex than chess: the Chinese board game Go / Wikimedia/Creative Commons Milestone in AI research likened to defeat of world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 by IBM’s Deep Blue computer 6169789578 Click to follow The Independent Tech It was considered one of the last great challenges between man and machine but now, for the first time, a computer program has beaten a professional player of the ancient Chinese game of Go in a defeat that many had not expected for at least another 10 years.
 The machine’s victory is being likened to the defeat of reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 by IBM’s Deep Blue computer, which became a milestone in the advance of artificial intelligence over the human mind.
 Go, however, is more complex than chess with an infinitely greater number of potential moves, so experts were surprised to find that computer scientists had invented a suite of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that taught the computer how to win against Europe’s top player.
 Read more 'Artificial intelligence alarmists' win 'Luddite of the Year' award The program, called AlphaGo, defeated European champion Fan Hui by a resounding five games to nil in a match played last October but only now revealed in a scientific study of the moves and algorithms published last night in the journal Nature.
 A match against the current world Go champion, Lee Sedol from South Korea, is now scheduled for March.
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 In tests against other Go computer games on the market, AlphaGo won all but one out of 500 games, even when other programs were given a head-start with pieces already positioned on the board.
 Mr Silver said the neural networks were able to learn by themselves, unlike the “supervised” training of other artificial intelligence algorithms.
 “It learns in a human-like manner but it still takes a lot of practice.