The wait is almost over.
In less than an hour from now, man will face
off against machine in an epic game of Baduk,
or Go.
The competitors are... grandmaster Lee Se-dol
of Korea versus artificial intelligence super
computer Alpha Go.
The first game of the five-game tournament
will start at 1 p.m., local time, here in
Seoul.
For an update, we now connect live to Lee
Ji-won, who's at the Four Seasons hotel, where
the game will be held.
Ji-won, lot of people in Korea and around
the world have been eagerly anticipating this
match up for months... the atmosphere there
must be fantastic...
Hi Mark.
Everyone here is very excited for the match
of the century, and you can feel the tension
in the air as the competitors get ready to
face off.
Journalists from Asia and around the world
-- about 350 members of the press -- are here
to see if artificial intelligence can really
beat human intelligence.
No one will be allowed into the playing area
during the game, but it will be broadcast
on TV throughout Asia on Korea's Baduk TV
and it will be live streamed on YouTube.
Yeah,... the YouTube channel is DeepMind But,
Ji-won, not many people, myself included,
are that familiar with Go,... can you give
us a brief run down of how the game works...
Well, Mark, first, let me tell you briefly
about the game of Baduk, or Go, as its known
in the rest of the world.
The goal is to surround the opponent's stones
or, house, as they call it, and gain as much
territory as possible.
The surrounded stones are then taken off the
board.
Now, during today's match, each player will
have 2-hours to make their moves.
If a player uses up that time, he will then
get an extra minute for each move.
If the player goes over the one-minute limit
three times, he loses automatically.
So the game should finish sometime between
5 and 6 p.m. at the latest.
Also, because AlphaGo can't physically move
the game pieces, one of the developers, who
is also a professional Go player, will act
in its place to place the stones and input
data.
After every match, the players and developers
will give a press conference to talk about
how the game went from their perspective.
That's all I have for now, but I'll be back
with an update on the winner in our next newscast.
