Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder and CEO of DeepMind (left) shaking hands with Lee Sedol (right), the world's best Go player with his daughter
If you've never heard of Google DeepMind, then welcome to the right place to get yourself educated. DeepMind is an artifical intelligence designed by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman in London during the year 2010, its purpose it to solve intelligence and use it to make the world a better place and was acquired by Google in 2014.
And just yesterday, during its first game at the Google DeepMind Challenge match, the system, AlphaGO has defeated the world's best Go player, Lee Sedol after 186 moves. This is the first time in history that a computer program has bested a top-ranked human Go player on a full 19x19 board with no handicap.
Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder and CEO of DeepMind, said, “What an incredibly exciting game. Lee Sedol is a formidable opponent, famed for his fighting style, and AlphaGo decided to go toe-to-toe with him, which made for a tense, close-fought game. We still have four games to go, so anything can still happen. Whatever the outcome, we feel this match is a testament to the power of human ingenuity.”
Lee Sedol said at the post-game press conference, “I would like to express my respect to Demis and his team for making such an amazing program like AlphaGo. I am surprised by this result. But I did enjoy the game and am looking forward to the next one.”
The Google DeepMind Challenge match is a best of five series and it's still on-going, second match is today at 1PM Korea Standard Time, followed by the rest of the games on 12 March (Saturday), 13 March (Sunday), and finally 15 March (Tuesday). If you want to check them battle it out, visit the challenge match press site.
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