It was in 1997 that the legendary Garry Kasparov had to concede defeat to IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue, albeit in quite controversial circumstances. While the nature of the victory is still under a cloud, one thing was made very clear – that computers will surpass the human mind in the near future.
This contest became the start of a revolution in chess and now, the sport has become heavily reliant on computers and the top players such as Magnus Carlsen and Vishy Anand use chess programs and AI technology to improve their level of play.
On Saturday, in a historical occasion for sport, artificial intelligence and possibly the future of mankind, a program developed by British AI company DeepMind recorded its third win a row over 18-time Go World Champion Lee Se-dol to clinch the best-of-five matches series.
Go is an ancient Chinese board game that is played on a 19x19 board and is considered to be much more complex than chess. While computers have mastered other games such as checkers and chess, Go was still a mountain that was yet to be scaled and this historic win in Seoul is a giant leap for computers and artificial intelligence technology.
Lee Se-dol is a Go Grandmaster, 18-time World Champion and the second-best player in the world, and over the course of the three games played so far, he has had absolutely no chance against AlphaGo.
He stated that he never even once felt in control during the games and that the level of play was unlike anything he had ever faced before. The program produced certain moves that top-level human players couldn’t even fathom and as AlphaGo went about its business, players watching the game were even moved to tears over the quality of the computer’s play!
Speaking at the press conference after the game, Google co-founder and Alphabet president Sergey Brin explained the enormous gravity of what had just happened. He said, “Go is a very beautiful game and I think it teaches a lot about life, much more so than a game like chess. When you watch really great Go players play, it is like a thing of beauty. So I'm very excited that we've been able to instill that level of beauty inside a computer.”
This win of computer over the human mind holds serious implications for the future. Some players say that the entry of computers will add a complete new dimension to the game and change the way this ancient game of strategy is played.
This event has helped boost the game’s popularity all over the world and more people are interested in Go now. On the other hand, there is a group of people who think that the intervention of computers will make the game more mechanical and remove the human element that makes it so interesting to play and watch.
