When IBM's Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry
Kasparov back in 1997, the world was agog
over AI's potential.
Tomorrow, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo system
will face an even tougher test in a series
of matches against a top-ranked master in
the ancient game of Go.
The tournament will in many ways be an ultimate
challenge for the artificial-intelligence
system following its victory last fall -- roughly
a decade earlier than anyone had expected
-- over European champion Fan Hui.
Is this humanity's last stand?
Lee Ji-won has the latest on this high-profile
face off in Seoul.
Alphabet Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt, Demis
Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind Technologies
and developer of AlphaGO, and Korea's Lee
Se-dol, the reigning human grandmaster of
the game... all appeared at a press conference
on Tuesday in Seoul.
They each had some final words before a major
tournament pitting Lee against the AI program
AlphaGo gets started on Wednesday.
"I am still confident that I will win against
AlphaGo.
But if I understand the algorithm of the program
correctly, if artificial intelligence is able
to imitate human intuition, it may be a challenge
for me to win all five games.
But I will do my best to show that it's not
time for artificial intelligence to overcome
humanity yet."
The Go player added that he's never played
against someone who isn't human.
To prepare himself for the challenge, he did
simulations where he imagined the tournament
and the atmosphere to get himself used to
the feeling that he's playing by himself.
Team AlphaGo is just as ready.
Since the program's victory against a human
in a tournament last October, Hassabis, the
program developer, has been working out some
of the kinks,... and said he is excited to
test the program again during the upcoming
event.
"And this is why we want to have this match.
We need to see if there are any weaknesses
we don't know about.
So of course, we tried to fix the weaknesses
that we know, but there may be something that
our systems don't do, that brilliant players
like Lee Se-dol can create."
"Both sides are confident of a victory,...
and with Lee Se-dol's creative playing and
AlphaGo's close to undefeated history, both
have a good chance of pulling it off.
In any case the world will be watching when
the winner of the first match is announced
tomorrow.
Lee Ji-won, Arirang News."
