Google's AlphaGo Notches Another Win for AI

Once, again, AlphaGo, the Go playing,

artificially intelligent machine

built by a team of researchers at Google,

has shown that its power exceeds those of any human.

Here in Wuzhen, China the machine won it's second game

against the world's best player,

19 year old, Ke Jie of China.

The match, in the beginning, was closer than the first.

Which was, also, won by AlphaGo.

According to AlphaGo's own calculations,

Ke Jie played the perfect game over the first 50 moves.

After 100 moves, according to the machine,

the margin was still razor thin.

But, then, as the game progressed, the player's humanness

seemed to come to the floor.

After about four hours of play, he resigned.

As AlphaGo takes a 2-0 lead in this best of three series,

it is underlined, once again, the steady progress of AI

over the past several years.

Go is a good litmus test

for the powers of artificial intelligence.

As DeepMind, founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis likes to say,

there are more possible positions on a Go board

than atoms in the universe.

Which leaves us with the third game

of this three game match set for Saturday.

Most experts agree that the machine will, once again, win.

But, there is a bit of drama left.

Today, the machine played first, which it sees as a weakness

and indeed this was much closer than the first game.

Here in the lower right corner of the board.

That's interesting. That is interesting.

Then, in the postgame press conference,

Ke Jie asked if, once again,

the machine could play first and Hassabis agreed.

But, in between today's game and the third game on Saturday,

there's another day of play.

The day begins with what Google is calling, Pair Go.

In essence, the machine and one top professional

will play against the machine and another top professional.

The idea is to see how man and machine can cooperate.

Then, in the afternoon,

there's what Google calls, Team Play.

In essence, the machine will play against

five top human players.

The idea is to see if the collective intelligence of humans

can top the machine.

Odds are it can't.