Google's new artificial intelligence can defeat both humans and other AIs. Fortunately, the only war zone where it fights and wins is the ancient board game Go（围棋）.
AlphaGo Zero, developed by Google-owned DeepMind, is the latest AI program. The original AlphaGo defeated Go master Lee Sedol last year, and AlphaGo Master, an updated version, went on to win 60 games against top human players. What's different about AlphaGo Zero is that it became potentially the world's best Go player without any help from humans.
The program AlphaGo Zero started off knowing only the basic rules and then played millions of games against itself in just a few days. After almost five million games played against itself, AlphaGo Zero could outplay humans and the original AlphaGo. After 40 days, it was capable of beating AlphaGo Master.
The program learned the strategies humans accumulated over thousands of years in a matter weeks and also developed nontraditional strategies and moves that beat the techniques of the human masters, leaving them astonished. "At each stage of the game, it seems to gain a bit here and lose a bit there, but somehow it ends up slightly ahead, as if by magic," said Andrew Jackson of the American Go Association
DeepMind says it has plans for the technology behind AlphaGo Zero beyond just defeating all over an ancient game board. "In the end, we want to apply these breakthroughs to helping solve all sorts of pressing real world problems like designing new materials," said Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, in a statement.
That sounds great, but just as a precaution, let's take the advice of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking and keep any super-fast learning AI away from the nuclear launch codes for now.
