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10. Lee Se-dol vs. AlphaGo Match Ushers in AI Era

2016-12-29

Lee Se-dol vs. AlphaGo Match Ushers in AI Era

The historic human versus artificial intelligence(AI) match in the Game of Go between South Korean professional player Lee Se-dol and Google’s AlphaGo brought about a sensation and ushered in the era of AI.

Lee, a nine-dan rank player regarded as one of the best Go players in the world, accepted the challenge against AI system AlphaGo developed by Google DeepMind. The five-game challenge match ran from March ninth to the 15th in Seoul.

At first, many thought that Lee would win all five matches given the “mysterious nature” of the game of Go, called "baduk" in Korean, which requires deep human intuition. While computers have beat human world chess champions before, many had said that such an outcome would be hard to achieve in the game of Go.

The match between Lee and AlphaGo turned heads, to say the least. People didn’t think much of it even though Lee lost the first match, thinking the world champion had the remaining matches in the bag. But the AI program prevailed to clinch three more wins, leaving Lee with one win.

What had started out as an AI challenge against man flipped into a match of man challenging AI.

The competition demonstrated not only the human brain’s remarkability but also the reality of AI’s enormous capacity.

AI is already being applied in the auto, medical, farming and other industries. It is regarded to be at the center of the fourth industrial revolution. Competition among countries around the world is heating up to gain as big of an edge as possible in related future markets.