[Aju News DB]
Lee Sedol, the world champion of the ancient Chinese board game "Go" is confident of his victory in a historic one-million-dollar match against a computer program in March.
"I have heard that Google DeepMind's AI is surprisingly strong and getting stronger, but I am confident that I can win at least this time,” he said after accepting the challenge match in Seoul.
Many Go experts in South Korea predicted Lee, 32, would win but some said he should not be complacent as Google's new computer program beat European go champion Fan Huia in all five games of a match in October, marking a significant advance for development of artificial intelligence.
The computer's unexpected victory was 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.
In a paper released on Wednesday, the journal Nature said that developers of the program, AlphaGo, say learning strategy may someday let computers help solve real-world problems like making medical diagnoses and pursuing scientific research.
Computers previously have surpassed humans for other games, including chess, checkers and backgammon. But Go has been seen as the most complex board game with an infinitely greater number of potential moves.
Experts were surprised to know that computer scientists had invented a suite of artificial intelligence algorithms that taught the computer how to win against Europe’s top player.
"Lee Sedol may lose one or two games because he has no experience in such a match," Yang Jae-Ho, secretary general of the Korea Baduk (Go) Association, told a local newspaper, adding the champion would score a final victory.
Charles Lim
아주경제 임장원 기자 = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
