DeepMind’s AlphaGo artificial intelligence deep learning system has won the final match of the Go series against world champion Lee Sedol. During a week long competition in South Korea, the AI from the London-based company forced Go world champion Lee Se-dol to admit defeat in almost every match played.
The final match, which lasted around five hours, saw Lee resign as it reached its conclusion. DeepMind’s AlphaGo AI made an early error but managed to recover to clinch victory.
DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis expressed his delight at the result. "AlphaGo wins game 5! One of the most incredible games ever," Hassabis tweeted straight after the result. "To comeback from the initial big mistake against Lee Sedol was mind-blowing!!!"
When 3-0 down, Lee managed to inflict one consolation victory against the AlphaGo software. Before the series began, the 17-time world champion believed he would win the series 4-1, or 5-0.
DeepMind’s approach may next be applied to simulations, healthcare and robotics."I love games, I used to write computer games. But it’s to the extent that they’re useful as a testbed, a platform for trying to write our algorithmic ideas and testing out how far they scale and how well they do and it’s just a very efficient way of doing that," Hassabis tells the Verge. "Ultimately we want to apply this to big real-world problems."
Hassabis has frequently expressed interest in creating a ‘robot scientist’, and this victory marks one of the early stages of that quest.