Don’t Freak Out Over Google’s AI Beating a Go Grandmaster. It’s a Good Thing

Computers have beaten us at our own games.

Checkers, Scrabble, Jeopardy.

But there is one game that a computer could never beat.

Go.

Inside the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Seoul,

Google is trying to change that,

by challenging one of the world's top Go players, Lee Sedol.

Go is simply put, complex.

In chess, there are twenty possible moves per turn.

For Go, it's about 200.

Go players base moves

on what the board looks like, how it feels.

To win, a machine must reproduce

the magic of human intuition.

AlphaGo's system uses deep neural networks,

which approximate the web of neurons in the human brain.

Basically, if you feed it enough Go moves

from the world's Grandmasters,

it can learn to play Go, and play it well.

This contest tests the progress of modern AI,

and measures its potential to rapidly reinvent

everything from internet search engines

and digital assistance,

to robotics and scientific research.

No matter whether the machine or the human prevails,

it's still a win for Google,

and the future of Artificial Intelligence.

A future where machines can truly

teach themselves to improve.