 Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo artificial intelligence has defeated the world’s number one Go player Ke Jie. AlphaGo secured the victory after winning the second game in a three-part match. Following the defeat, Ke Jie told reporters: “I’m a little bit sad, it’s a bit of a regret because I think I played pretty well.” AlphaGo has built up its expertise by studying older matches and playing thousands of games against itself. The company says the eventual plan is to deploy its artificial intelligence “in areas of medicine and science”. The types of intelligence exhibited by machines that are good at playing games are seen as very narrow. While they may produce algorithms that are useful in other fields, few think they are close to the all-purpose problem solving abilities of humans that can come up with good solutions to almost any problem they encounter. Prof Cristianini added that while competition at a gaming level is fine, it should not govern how we view our relationship with intelligent machines going forward. “We should focus on the good things that we can get out of them and be careful not to create situations in which we put ourselves in direct competition with machines.” Both experts agreed that such algorithms could be adapted to other fields, such as health care. DeepMind has already begun working with the UK’s national health service to develop apps and other tools for diagnosis. |