THE defeat of Korean Go world champion Lee Sedol to AlphaGo, a computer program created by Google, has raised plenty of interest and enthusiasm among China’s Go players and tech circles. Before the matches, many had believed that artificial intelligence was not yet developed enough to be capable of mastering Go, an ancient Chinese board game considered more complex than chess. Strictly speaking, Lee is not the best Go player today. China’s teenage prodigy Ke Jie, 19, is the highest-ranked player currently, followed by South Korea’s 23-year-old Park Jeong-hwan and Japan’s Yuta Iyama, 27. Lee, the No. 4, is also more than 10 years older than the top players. Like in other sports games, younger players in their 10s or 20s show their best performance in Go as well. Then, why did Google choose Lee to play with AlphaGo? Data should be one of the key factors. Lee who turned pro at the age of 12 has more than 20 years of experience, which means he has more old matches for AlphaGo to study and learn from. Another factor is his personality. He is known for his aggressive and unconventional style of play. And unlike other Go players who were sceptical about playing against an AI, he showed willingness to try. “I accepted Google’s offer in three minutes. I always had curiosity about AI’s Go skills so I thought playing with it was the best way to solve my curiosity,” he said. Chinese Go grandmaster Ke, who says he can beat AlphaGo, admitted to being surprised too by the machine’s capabilities. “I have to say I underestimated the mind power of AlphaGo prior to the first match as I thought Lee Sedol can win in a 5-0 whitewash,” Ke told Xinhua on Thursday. “I want to see actually how it is to play against AlphaGo. Like the Chinese proverb goes, it’s better to see once than hear dozens of times and it’s better to have a try yourself than you see how others play dozens of times,” he said. The 18-year-old Chinese, who has defeated Lee Sedol six times and lost to him twice, is likely to be AlphaGo’s next opponent. In October last year, AlphaGo defeated European Go champion Fan Hui. “Now facing AlphaGo, I do not feel the same strong instinct of victory when I play a human player, but I still believe I have the advantage against it. It’s 60 percent in favour of me,” Ke said. Besides Go players, the ongoing man versus machine contest has raised a lot of interest in China’s technology circles. When asked to comment on Lee’s defeat to AlphaGo in a press conference Thursday, China’s Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang said that while artificial intelligence can improve people’s lives, “person-to-person exchanges are still the most important part of human activities today.” Lei Jun, CEO and founder of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, argued roughly along the same lines in an essay published after the first match. Lei, who rushed from the National People’s Congress meeting to watch the match over his phone, wrote that “thanks to science and technology, the life of an average person today is probably a lot better than it was for an emperor hundreds of years ago.” While admiring Lee Sedol’s courageous performance against the machine, Lei said he’s very excited about the future possibilities of artificial intelligence in transforming people’s everyday lives. “A colleague shared a joke with me today: It isn’t scary that AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol; what would be scary is if it lost to him on purpose. Thank God this didn’t happen yet!” Lei wrote in the essay. Meanwhile Kaifu Lee, founder of Innovation Works and former head of Google in China, warned about the real dangers of artificial intelligence in his writing also published after the first AlphaGo match. According to Lee, machines and robots will replace many non-expert workers, but they will also be tools for creating tremendous value that will support people. Hence the real danger posed by artificial intelligence is not that it will enslave humanity, but that it may cause humans to lose their fighting spirit and make them passive, Lee wrote. (SD-Agencies) | 