Machine trains self to beat humans at world's hardest game
The ancient strategy game of Go may have met its ultimate match in Google’s AI.
The brain-taxing board game is a little like an Eastern version of chess, except many times more complex. It has millions of devotees in China, Korea and Japan. Many of them tuned in today to watch an artificial intelligence computer built by Google’s DeepMind beat the world champion, Lee Sedol, in the first of a five-game contest.
Duels like these don’t come often. That’s because the vast majority of human-versus-machine contests are rarely worth watching at all. Either the humans would so obviously win—try getting a machine to write jokes—or we’d so obviously lose. You wouldn’t run a race against a car, or try to out-hammer a steam drill.
But every once in awhile, a technological moment comes when the man-machine match-up gives us a fight worth watching. (Just ask John Henry.) DeepMind vs. Lee Sedol is one of those moments. But as the video above shows, the stakes of this week’s historic battle may not be what you think.
More Like This

Trump and Biden Both Want to Repeal Section 230. Would That Wreck the Internet?
Today's heated political arguments over censorship and misinformation online are rooted in a 26-word snippet of a law that created the Internet as we know it.

Health Risks of Vaping: Lessons From the Battle With Big Tobacco
Like cigarette manufacturers decades ago, e-cigarette makers have pitched their products as fun and safe. But nobody knows what the risks are.

Google Workers Walked Out Over Harassment. A Year Later, What’s Changed?
Sexual harassment. Discrimination. Workplace inequity. Google’s employees demonstrated against unfair practices. But has anything changed?

Lessons From the Challenger Tragedy
Normalization of deviance, the process of becoming inured to risky actions, is a useful concept that was developed to explain how the Challenger disaster happened.