Google’s Go-playing version of DeepMind AI, AlphaGo, managed to score yet another win against Lee Sedol, the 18-time world champion, in the second match out of a total of five.
AlphaGo’s Near Perfect Game
Yesterday, Lee Sedol believed that AlphaGo didn’t do so well in the beginning, but the AI managed to squeeze a win against him towards the end of the game. In the second game, it was also Lee Sedol’s opportunity to take advantage of AlphaGo’s potential weaknesses after learning a little bit about its style. However, to his surprise, AlphaGo played a “near perfect game” this time.
“Yesterday, I was surprised, but today I am quite speechless. I would have to say, if you look at the way it was played, I admit that it was a very clear loss on my part. From the very beginning of the game, there was not a moment in time where I thought that I was leading the game,” Lee Sedol said in the post-game conference.“Yesterday, as I was playing the game, I felt that AlphaGo played some problematic positions, but today I really feel that AlphaGo had played a near perfect game. There was not a moment that I thought AlphaGo’s moves were unreasonable,” he added.
At the conference he was also asked if he found any weaknesses in AlphaGo’s game, but he said that he lost the game because he couldn’t find any.
Sedol also expects that the next games are only going to become more difficult, possibly because AlphaGo becomes ever so slightly better after each game it plays. Therefore, he added that he would need to focus even more for the next games. He would also need to try and get an edge in the early game, when AlphaGo could be at its weakest, even though AlphaGo’s weakest moves could still be too good to be easily exploited.
A Stronger Challenger?
Chinese Go Grandmaster Ke Jie, who some believe that in the past few years has been a better player than Lee Sedol, said that at this point in time, he would have a 60 percent chance of beating AlphaGo.
Google would likely not give everyone who says they can beat AlphaGo a chance to play five matches against the AI, but it could be interesting to see additional matches against other world-class players. However, this would have to happen soon, as even Ke Jie said that it may be a matter of months, or at most years, until even he couldn’t beat the AI anymore.
Ke Jie only became a 9-dan (the highest level in Go) player last year, and since then he defeated Lee Sedol with a score of 3-2 earlier this year.
The next match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol will be played on March 11, 11pm ET (March 12, 1pm KST).
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu.
