Google’s AI Is Changing the Way a 3000-Year-Old Game Is Played – Futurism

In BriefGoogle is partnering with China's top Go players and AIexperts for a five-day Go festival this May. The festival's purposeisn't just to pit human pro players against AlphaGo, but to testthe AI's creativity and adaptability, also. Winning Streak

Googles DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) wowed the world when it won in a series of Go against 18-time world champion Lee Sedol. The historic win was a first for DeepMinds Go-playing AI, AlphaGo, but it wasnt its last. Earlier this year, it defeated more than 50top Go players online.

AlphaGo is clearly a force to be reckoned with in the world of Go, and now, Google is partnering with the best human Go players to explorethe AIs capabilities and how human players could learn from it.

Clearly, there remains much more to learn from this partnership between Gos best human players and its most creative A.I. competitor, according to Googles DeepMind. Thats why were so excited to announce AlphaGos next step: a five-day festival of Go and artificial intelligence in the games birthplace, China.

The Future of Go Summit, a collaboration between the Chinese Go Association, the Chinese government, and Google, is scheduled to run from May 23 to 27, 2017. Aside from Chinas top Go players, leading AI experts from both Google and China will also be in attendance. The idea is to test AlphaGos creativity and adaptability, plus its ability to work in tandem with human players.

The summit will feature a variety of game formats involving AlphaGo and top Chinese players, specifically designed to explore the mysteries of the game together, Googles blog post said. Those include Pair Go, a format in which Chinese pros will compete against each other while partnered with an AlphaGo teammate. Then, theres Team Go, during which AlphaGo will compete against a five-person team ofChinas top pro players. Lastly, the main event will be a match between AlphaGo and the worlds top ranked Go player, Ke Jie.

AI is advancing rapidly and not justin the realm of games like Go. More and more frequently, were seeing AI that can do tasks previously exclusive to humans, such as writing stories, creating movies, composing music, and even conducting behavioral analysis. The exponential growth of AIis due, in large part, to rapid improvements in machine learning algorithmsand neural network systems.

Googles DeepMind is a prime example. Apart from dominating atGo, DeepMind has shown that its possible forAI to have a memoryfrom whichit can learn. The AI has alsooutperformed human lip readers,contributed to medical research, and even revealed that AI couldhave killer instincts a scary affirmation for those dreadingthe singularity. Thats just a sampling of whatDeepMind AI has been able to accomplish, and it isnt the only AI pushing research forward.

The Go festival in May will be another opportunity for AI research to grow. [W]e will explore how AlphaGo has created new knowledge about the oldest of games, and how the technologies behind AlphaGo, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, are bringing solutions to some of the worlds greatest challenges into reach, Google said.

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Google's AI Is Changing the Way a 3000-Year-Old Game Is Played - Futurism